Hey everyone,
I have a group interview this weekend with AEON. It’s a chain of companies that teach English privately in Japan. Part of the group interview is to present a 5 minute section of a 30 minute lesson plan. I’ve never created a lesson plan before, so although I have a rough idea of what to do, I dont know how to make it look professional.
As for what I will teach, the notice specifically said that this lesson should be for beginner students of English, so I am thinking about doing basic ko-so-a-do words, or this/there/over there. For the group activity, I will partner people up and hand each person a bag of differently colored shapes. Then they can pick stuff out of the bag and have dialogues like, “what is that?” “This is a red circle” and so forth.
What do you guys think? Anyone have experience in beginner TESL, particularly with Japanese people?
Yoroshiku onegai shimasu (please treat me well)
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For two of the three years we lived in Japan, my wife worked for a similar company as what they called a “Native Speaker.” It was primarily conversational English, so her “lessons” consisted mostly of responding to questions the students would ask. They had to ask their questions in English. In my own classroom experiences, I’ve settled on an outline form, with topic sentences designed to start my train of thought. You shouldn’t be concentrating on trying to read the material…you will very likely lose the interest of the students.
Do you know the age range for your students?
StG
The age range for this lesson is the age of my fellow interviewees, so 20+
Have a reason for the communication (other than - the teacher has asked me to do this) - choose a functional phrase such as “would you like a … ?” or a simple who are you exchange presenting two or three questions (something like What’s your name, Where are you from, What do you do). Allow time for lots of drilling as a group and individuals to check and drum in pronunciation. Give learners little role cards with new characters on them (Name, home town, job) and ask them to practise the questions, have a tray with pictures of food on it and get the learners offering each other things. NB 30mins isn’t long you’ll only have time for one of these ideas.
I’m confused. Do you need to prepare a formal lesson plan, or are you interested in methods of teaching? Or is it both, you present a lesson plan and they critique how well you prepared it and followed it in practice?
Also, do you need to actually provide the interviewer with your documented lesson plan? If so, you will want to state the learning objective (since you have just 30 minutes, I totally agree with Ponster that you want to keep it pretty simple), and then list the steps you’ll take to achieve that objectives, as well as how you will test for mastery of the learning objective.
I have to turn in the lesson plan at the end. Here is what the e-mail says:
“5 minute teaching demonstration: Applicant must prepare (and submit) a 30 minute lesson plan, 5 minutes of which will be presented. Other applicants will act as students. The lesson should be for beginner students of English.”
Here’s the method I learned. This was over 40 years ago and I haven’t taught a class in 30.
The nemonic is: TOMIPASTA.
Now if I can remember all the steps.
T= Title
O= Objective
M= Materisls: training aids, handouts, etc.
I= Introduction: Tell the students what to expect, what the will learn.
P= Presentation: The main part of the lesson
A= Answer any questions
S= Summarize the presentation, hitting the high points
T= Testing (optional)
A= Analize the results, how effective was your plan
As I said, it’s been a long time. I invite any corrections. There are other methods, this is the way I learned it.