Hi!
So I passed my ITTT TEFL course with a 95% and have had my first 2 submissions of the final lesson plan reviewed and returned requesting for changes. I am down to my last resubmission and am quite lost with what I am not complying with (I’ll attach the reviewer’s feedback). Any feedback will be MUCH appreciated. The reviewer said that the lesson plan only needs changes in the STUDY phase, so feel free to skip to that

This is the prompt:

Write a straight-arrow ESA lesson plan for a pre-intermediate level class of adults where the focus of the lesson is to practice one usage of the present continuous tense and for the students to be able to use it effectively. Bear in mind that at pre-intermediate level, it’s very likely that the students would have come across the present continuous tense before as this is one of the first tenses that students of English learn. Provide as much detail as possible for each stage of the lesson and activities used. The lesson should be one hour long.

Teacher: Javier E. Acevedo-Arus

Expected number of students: 20

Class level: Pre Intermediate

Language point: Present continuous tense (affirmative form) to describe actions in progress at the time of speaking

Teaching aids: Worksheets (Gap-fill activities), Overhead projector, Whiteboard

Learner objectives:
1) Have students learn the proper
usage of affirmative present continuous tense
when describing actions in progress at the time of speaking.
2) Be able to apply the
affirmative present continuous tense
when creating their own original
dialogues

Personal aims:
1) Maintain high student talk time and
encourage students to appropriately
use the present continuous tense
2) Effective classroom organization
through group/pair activities

Anticipated problems for students:
1) Some students may not recall
the conjugations of the present
simple of the auxiliary
“to be” and the conjugation of the
present participle (verb ending in
-ing)

Solution:
1) Cover the basics about the
present simple conjugation
of the auxiliary verb “to be” and
present participle conjugation using
visual aids.

Anticipated problems for teacher:
1) Not inciting enough student
participation
2) Over extending the class beyond
the 1 hour time limit

Solution:
1) Use miming and give particular
emphasis during the Engage phase
2) Maintain the structure of the lesson
plan and pay close attention to each
phase therein

Procedure:
1) Ask student to talk about things Engage 5mins T-S
they always do in the mornings on
their way to university or work.
Create class discussion. Use
miming to incite vocabulary and
student participation.

2)List students’ actions (drive, wake Engage 2mins T-S
up, walk, eat, park, shower) on the
board.

3)Mime different actions to elicit more [u]Study 7mins T-S[/u]
verbs from the class.
(For example: dance, swim, run, cry).
Add these verbs to the list of verbs
written on the board during the Engage phase
and start writing a few sample sentences with
these verbs to describe what the teacher
is doing at the time of speaking.
Examples:
He is crying
The teacher is swimming
I am writing

4)Using the verbs written on the board, [u]Study 3mins T-S[/u]
have students form simple sentences using
the present contuous tense. Write
these sentences on the board.
Examples:
I am walking
You are eating
He is driving

5)Review present simple conjugation of [u] Study 7mins T-S[/u]
verb “to be”, the conjugation of present
participle of the main verb (verb ending in -ing),
and the construction of the present continuous
using information slides on an overhead projector.
Information slides should include simple examples
of the present continuous using images of different scenarios.
Example:
(an image of a dog barking)
The dog is barking.

6)Gap-fill activity worksheets [u]Study 8mins S-S[/u]
(to be completed in pairs) to practice
conjugation and usage of the present
continuous tense when describing actions
occuring at the time of speaking.
The gap-fill worksheet will include pictures
of people doing different actions as well
as the verb in its infinitive tense.
The students must then construct complete
sentences by converting the verb to present
continuous form to describe the action occuring in the image.
Remind the student that they should assume
that actions shown are occuring right now.
Examples:
(a picture of a woman driving – verb: to drive)
Sample answer: The woman is driving.

(a picture of a class taking notes in their notebooks – verb: to study)
Sample answer: The students are studying.

7)Discuss the above gap-fill activity. [u]Study 3mins T-S[/u]
Provide feedback.

8)Divide students in pairs and have them [u]Activate 15mins S-S[/u]
write a short dialogue where one student a
sks a question regarding what the other
student is doing and the other student
must answer using the present continuous.
Each student must use the present continuous
at least once. Answers are encouraged
to be creative or funny. Provide students with
images and names of different places they could be
(school, bar, beach, living room etc.)
during the dialogue using the overhead projector.
Example:
Student 1: What are you doing in the bar?
Student 2: I am crying and I am drinking. What are you doing?
Student 1: I am dancing and having fun!

9)Pairs present the dialogues they [u]Activate 10mins S-S[/u]
prepared to the class.

Below are the comments from the ITTT reviewer Jon:

Engage Stage

1. This stage is fine. No corrections needed.

Study Stage

2. You still need to make sure that you are eliciting sentences in keeping with your chosen usage, the usage and the structure of the tense. The easiest way to do this would be to use prompt questions that would encourage the students to respond in the present continuous tense. You could also use pictures, photos, etc. which are all elicitation techniques that will encourage the students to give you information that they already know. If you write all of their answers on the board, they should see a familiar pattern developing which in turn should result in them being able to give you the basic structure and specific usage for the tense.

3. Once you have example sentences from the students to work with, you need to start asking open ended questions in order to elicit the usage itself and the structure of the tense, for example, ‘Can someone give me an example of when we would use this sentence?’, ‘Is it the present simple or the present continuous tense?’, ‘Do you do this every day?’, ‘Is it something you are doing right now?’, etc.

4. By asking questions like this, it encourages the students to think about the structure and tense usage enabling you to elicit that information from them. Please bear in mind that these questions are just to give you the general idea and would need to be adapted to suit the usage you are covering and the theme of your lesson.

5. I would recommend that you go back and watch ‘ESA Demonstration class 2’ from unit 10 where you can see the elicitation process in action. There are several points in the lesson where different elicitation techniques were used:

8:10 prompt questions, pictures/drawings

13:06 miming

14:52 gap fill on the board

6. I would also recommend that you review pages 4, 5 and 6 of unit 3 where this concept is explained and different elicitation techniques are given.

Activate Stage

7. This stage is fine. No corrections needed.

[b]Sorry for such a long post, I’ve already run my lesson plan by a few ESL teachers and they only recomment perhaps including actual dialogue. Any recommendations are welcome! Many thanks![/b]

Hey! So this is a couple months late but I was wondering — did your lesson plan get approved?