Level: Pre-intermediate
Length: 45 minutes
Main aim: By the end of the lesson, students will have read for gist and specific information in the context of communication.
Subsidiary aim: Students will be better able to talk fluently about communication.
Setting: Online
CELTA has you teaching real students as early as your second lesson, so I can tell you that, on the night of my Teaching Practice 1 (TP1) in late July, I was pretty nervous. I’d taught English online before, but that was when I was young and full of misplaced self-confidence (and entirely unaware of what I was supposed to be doing). Students needed to read for gist (a reading subskill where one reads quickly to gain an understanding of the overall point of the text) and for specific information (a reading subskill where one scans a text for answers to specific questions). I created a presentation and handout from scratch (based on Empower Pre Intermediate, Doff, Thaine, Puchta, Stranks, Lewis-Jones with Burton, 2015, CUP Unit 1B p.10 and 11), and set out to build rapport and get students talking about how technology shapes everyday communication in the modern world.
My lesson plan included a lead-in, to engage students in the context of communication, a language clarification stage, to pre-teach vocabulary that may have blocked students from following the lesson, the reading for gist stage, with small group breakouts, monitoring, and feedback, the reading for specific information stage, again with small group breakouts, monitoring, and feedback, a follow-up task, allowing students to produce the language more freely, and a delayed error correction stage.
What Went Well
Although I still had a lot to learn after this initial class, I was very proud of my first lesson. I understood the stages of a receptive skills lesson very well, and they remain my favorite type of lesson to teach. I was Teacher A in my group of six Trainee Teachers, which meant I was the very first one to teach. While others (particularly Teachers D, E, and F, who taught later in the week) had the opportunity to see what worked well and what didn’t, I entered this first lesson with only one video and one in-person observation of experienced teacher’s to go on. All things considered, I think I handled the challenge remarkably well.
Some specific areas that went well:
- Strong start and clear aims: My visual lead-in worked exactly as I had planned. Students quickly identified “communication” as the common theme and shared their own habits. My tutor noted that I build good rapport with my students and developed clear and logical staging that supported the main aim.
- Prepared and resource-rich: I spent hours developing a full set of slides and a handout, including blocking vocabulary, prediction tasks, and comprehension checks, to my lesson. The procedure section of my lesson plan included clearly marked “notes to self” that helped keep me on track in this crucial first lesson and reminded me to do things such as take notes for delayed error correction.
Challenges and Learning Points
While my planning was strong, my rapport was good, and my content professional, there were many areas for improvement:
- Timing and pacing: Despite careful planning, I ran out of time and had to shorten the important final speaking task. My tutor recommended that I move faster in earlier stages, particularly reading for gist and language clarification, to safeguard time for fluency work. He also hinted that i needed to both increase the depth and decrease the time spent in my language clarification stage.
- Instructions and technical hiccups: Some of my instructions were longer than necessary/appropriate, and I occasionally repeated students’ answers instead of letting them stand, unnecessarily increasing my teacher-talk-time. A breakout room mix-up also meant that everyone landed up in the same room for the productive task, prompting me to practice my Zoom skills in even more depth than I had already tried to do.
- Supporting varied proficiency: One students who arrived late had very limited English, and someone was clearly translating for them in the background. In the moment, I simplified and offered this student yes/no questions, but I found myself wondering if I needed to build in more low-threshold entry tasks for students at this level. (My tutor noted that occasionally students are added to a class who are not proficient enough to keep up with the others, that this would happen throughout my career, and that I would need to focus on the level and aims I was there to teach and later bring the student up with school administration).
Areas of Focus
I came away form TP1 feeling that I could handle this, but also that I had a long way to go. Specifically, I planned to try the following:
- Front-load a low-stakes breakout in the lead-in to build early confidence.
- I later learned, from a different tutor, the breakout rooms might be skipped in the early stages, particularly in short lessons like mine, and particularly when the main aim isn’t speaking.
- Shorten gist prediction and language clarification to free up more time for speaking.
- Print or split-screen the plan so ICQs/CCQs are easier to track on the fly.
- Keep instructions short, imperative, and visual, and monitor breakout rooms more actively.
These changes directly address CELTA criteria such as 5a (organizing group work), 5b (managing interaction), and 5i (pacing).
Key Takeaways
I had a good plan, but it was a beginner’s plan. I also could have benefited from more on-the-spot decision-making to shorten stages that were taking too long. I saw how quickly students engaged with a task that felt authentic and how crucial concise instructions and timing/pacing discipline are in an online environment. Most importantly, I experienced the reflective cycle: plan, teach, analyze, improve. This cycle defines effective language teaching I already began to feel the benefits as early as this first lesson.
