Fast and Easy Lesson Planning for ESL Young Learners --FREE YL Lesson Plan

Unsure what or how to teach ESL to young learners?
Tired of spending long hours searching for material to use in your ESL lesson?

Don't waste any more of your valuable time and build your confidence in ESL teaching.

I've created a book for the experienced teacher to the least experienced ones. It saves you the time of finding FREE sites filled with the material to supplement your textbook or provide material for non-textbook environments.

Here is a sample lesson of what you can do using my new book:

Age: 6-7
Topic: Farm Animals

1st-Start the class: with "Old MacDonald" in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6HzoUcx3eo (during this students are writing down the date and/or get out settled in their seats with paper and pencil )

2nd-Warmer: Sing the days of the week with the Hello PPT (=a PowerPoint that goes over the days of the week and other quick review verbal exercises)

3rd-Game 1: Telling Timehttps://www.gamestolearnenglish.com/telling-the-time/

(Students shout out the correct option by saying A, B, or C. This is a game that covers a topic we have reviewed in the warmer.)

4th-Speaking 1: Video-Learn the Farm Animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV8MSaYlSbc
(Have students listen and repeat. Ask what it is in their language. For older kids, you can have them write down the translation from English to their own language. Have students mimic the sounds of the animals they see. Keep stressing the phrase: This is a..... Encourage students to use the whole phrase after a few times of completing your sentence.)

5th-Game 2: Group Wordsearch (I've been working online since the quarantine so I place a word search about the vocabulary the class will be using. Before starting the word search, we go over the words in their own translation. Then students use the computer's pen to find the answer to the word search on the screen.)

6th-Speaking 2: Show students the worksheet from https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-worksheets/vocabulary/animals/farm-animals/9021 Ask: "How many animals do they see?" Have them say what the animals are. Encourage the phrase: This is a... Ask: "Which is their favorite animal?" Have students do a round-robin of answering you in a complete sentence. This goes back to practicing a previous language point (A habit you should get into when teaching YL. Always have parts in your lesson where students are encouraged to use old phrases so as to refresh their memory and continue their English education.)

7th-Writing: (Some students are still slow at this stage when it comes to writing. At this age of 6-7, I minimize the writing. Otherwise, it will take all class period for three of them to complete writing 5 sentences.) We complete the worksheet as a class. Then I have students comply and complete 2 or 3 sentences from the worksheet that I give them. Example: (1) This is a ... , (2) It is ....(color);  (3) My favorite animal is a...

8th-Game 3:Online memory game:https://www.eslgamesplus.com/farm-domestic-animals-vocabulary-esl-memory-game/

(Put the students in teams and have individual pick the cards. Score points when a team member gets a pair. To make it less boring and fairer, I only allow a turn per student, even if the student has won a pair for his/her team.)

***I put in more games than normal because I am teaching online and it helps keep my young learners' attention.

End the class with "Old MacDonald" in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6HzoUcx3eo  as students get ready to leave.

It took less time to plan this lesson than it took for me to explain it to you. This is what I mean by shortening your lesson planning and having less hassle from searching what to do.

My resource book has a variety of topics are categorized in the order for teaching young learners from ages 3 to 8 years old. Teach with the ease of accessing a multitude of subjects.

Use it to cut your planning down by giving the majority of what you need to plan a great lesson along with tips to help you develop the lesson with seamless transitions.

Get your copy of TODAY!

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My Ideal Lesson Plan

from pixabay.com. Photographer: Pexels

Lesson planning is an unpaid piece of your free time that comes with teaching. And it's not like you can't have a plan when those kids show up. What are you gonna do with them for an hour or more? You can't play games for the whole period. Even young learners will get bored after a while. 

There is nothing more nerve-wracking than thinking from the top of your head for what to do while trying to manage a class of young people. 

You got little Mario out of his seat again. Cindy Lou and Sara are marking each other's paper with scriggly marks. Adrian is insulting Marcos. Little Tina is asking to go to the restroom. Now, you have five other kids who have decided to go to the restroom. Paco keeps pulling on your shirt asking what he should be doing next. It's hell.

from pixabay.com. Artist: Jordan Dreyer

Have a plan. Have a plan. have a plan. If you end up changing it, fine. But always have something to fall back on.

Anyways, having a plan can consume a lot of your time, especially when you first start out teaching. Planning takes experience as well as knowing your students and the material. You need to know: what they can do; what they need support in completing; how long it takes them to do certain activities; and what things they like to do. If you have a plan for teaching a song in class with singing and dancing but your students hate dancing and/ or singing, that's gonna be the longest 3 minutes of your life. 3 minutes when it should have taken 10!

from pixabay.com. Photographer: nastya_gepp

So you have to plan. I've heard horror stories of teachers planning every day from anywhere from 2 -4 hours a day! Why!?! Who has that much time!?! And you're doing it for free. 

I have kids, other interests and a household to run. I don't have 2-3 hours daily for planning. And if I did, I wouldn't want to be planning in the same amount of time to teach it. You probably don't want the same either.

Let me help you change all that in less time. With the plan below, it takes me an hour per week to completely plan my lesson for the next week. I do spend some time gathering material to photocopy. And as an extra measure, every morning I go over the plan for that day's class to make sure it works and I have what I need for it. But this takes about 10 to 20 minutes. So you are looking altogether at about less than 3 hours a week that I spend on lesson planning.

It's effective. Efficient. And less of your free time taken up.

Regardless of the experience you have or don't have, here is a lesson structure for all levels that will make your planning faster.

The Plan:
Time in an hour class	Activity
5 to 15 minutes	Review (This could be simple exercises from the last grammar point you have covered in class. Or vocabulary connected to the lesson that you have seen before. Or drilling. I usually use workbook material not used in previous lessons or I take exercises from webpages that we had not completed. Either way, the key here is revising. So don't show them anything new in content and style.)
16 to 18 minutes	Lead-in to book/ lesson activity (Sign up to my weekly newsletter to get tips on different lead-ins)
17 to 37 minutes	Book content (Don't have a book? Use whatever resources you have to present and teach the learning objective)
38 to 52 minutes	Workbook/Practice worksheets  (This time is used to practice the aim of the lesson.)
*Note: Fun activities can be mixed into the presenting and/or completion of the book content and workbook practice
53 to 54 minutes	Students pack up
55 to 60 minutes	Game Time (Hopefully something connected to what they did today. But if not, have it related to previously taught topics/grammar)

It's that simple. 

Keep in mind that you will incorporate lead-ins for every transition into a new activity. They can be as basic as a pair discussion about the topic, describing the picture in the text, pre-reading using the title or a list race. (A list race is where students have a certain allotment of time to write down as many words as they can which group in the topic you have given them. Example: The topic is food. So they write banana, pear, etc.) More lead-in ideas are available in the weekly newsletter. Click to join.

Keep this as your routine. Modify it by adding exam practice during workbook time for exam students. Or if you have a class longer than an hour, add testing strategies for listening and speaking. Moreover, be sure to place a break in the middle of a long class session for a 5-minute game, instead of at the end. This will help reboot the students so their eyes are not glazing over towards the end of the period.

Try planning this way and see how long it takes you. You'll be surprised at how refreshed you will become when you get your free time back during the workweek.  

Let me know how it goes. Write a comment about your experience with planning and/or what happened when you tried my method.

And if you like to know about some more FREE opportunities, sign up for our FREE newsletter and get monthly updates by email about: 

• *find out which new worksheets, lesson plans, craft sheets, flashcards, games, tips and so on have been added to https://forteachingesl.blogspot.com/  

• 
  
• *ESL teaching tips and ideas about teens and kids.  
• 
  
• *materials and resources  
• 
  
• *promotions and offers on resource books 
• 
  
• Click here to join