The ESA Methodology of Teaching - Sample ESA Lesson
Now an example of a straight arrow ESA lesson for our engage phase. What we're going to do is to show the students a video of animals and they are going to say what they like about those animals and try to create a list of some more. So, remember what we're trying to do here is to get the students talking and thinking in English. We're using a typical engage activity, which is to create a list and we try to make sure that all the students have been involved in some way in creating those lists. Moving on to the study phase, the first part is going to be the board work and the teacher is going to try to elicit from the students what each of those animals can and can't do. Typically, what the students will say is just single words, so "run," "jump," "fly," etc. What we would then need to do is to make sure that each of those things is put into a sentence. So what we will do is to run through each of the animals and get the students to tell us in full sentences what it can and can't do. This will be covering the actual grammar point that we're trying to cover and so what we then need to do is to make sure that the students understand this particular grammar point and we can cover that with the use of worksheets. So, for example, we may have a gap fill and we may have a matching activity on that particular point. On to the final phase of the lesson, which is the activate. What we're going to do here is to get the students in pairs to create their own super animal and once they've drawn that particular animal out, they're going to write a number of sentences to tell us what it can and can't do. After that, they're then going to present that information to the rest of the class.
Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next.
