This lesson was my first time teaching at the Upper-Intermediate level during the CELTA course — and one of my favourites. Built around the theme of getting lost, it focused on helping students practice listening for gist and specific information, followed by a fluency activity where they shared their own experiences.
The class opened with a personal story from my travels in South Africa, which helped establish rapport and set the tone for a lively, story-based session. Students listened to a recording about Luiza, a woman who lost her way in the forest, then discussed how she found her way back. Through this, they developed both comprehension and spontaneous speaking skills while reinforcing key vocabulary such as shortcut, clearing, and rare and protected.
My tutor described this as a “successful first Upper-Intermediate lesson” with strong preparation, good pacing, and clear aims. The feedback encouraged me to keep reducing teacher talking time (TTT), make vocabulary clarification even more student-centered, and allow brief thinking time before discussions to support fluency.
Personally, I felt relaxed and confident throughout the lesson — a turning point in how I approached teaching. I was particularly pleased with my vocabulary analysis and timing, both of which helped me finish comfortably and allow time for meaningful feedback. Looking ahead, I plan to continue refining my error correction and pronunciation modelling, especially when working with different English accents.
Take a look at an online, asynchronous version of the lesson I created here:
