TUTOR COMMENTS
Date: 11 October 2023 Level: PI Tutor: Alex
Start: 19.17 Length: 45" Ss: 10 TP no.: 1 Teacher: Adelina
Lesson focus
● Grammar
● Speaking
Comments on lesson plan (unassessed for TP1)
● Your main aim is clearly stated in terms of both the target grammar and what it will enable Ss to do.
● You've set yourself some worthwhile professional goals with clear action points.
● Your procedure is logically arranged though some of the stages are misleadingly labelled – have a
look at my comments below on the procedure itself. You've provided a good level of detail so that it's
generally clear what you intend to do at each stage, and identified some useful problems and
solutions – well done.
Strengths
● You have a warm and approachable manner with the Ss.
● Your instructions were clear throughout and you made use of modelling and ICQs to ensure that Ss
knew what to do.
● You made use of the context of the previous lesson to focus on a useful set of example sentences.
● You did a good job of focusing on the meaning of the past simple and the regular / irregular
distinction. This was teacher-led, but you involved the Ss well by eliciting from them throughout.
● You then used a guided discovery to further clarify the forms of the past simple in a learner-centred
manner. Ss worked well in groups, you monitored closely, and managed feedback clearly, again
eliciting from the Ss – good.
● Good to see you tackling pronunciation – though this could have been got through a lot quicker had
you used your own voice and avoided the stuff about consonant voicing.
● You made a good decision in asking Ss to pair check the gapfill exercises when it became clear that
there were some problems with Ss' answers. (Actually you'd planned this, but you tried to go straight to
feedback, I guess for reasons of time? – but then realised that the pair check was necessary. Good
thinking.)
● Unfortunately you ran out of time for the freer practice – but Ss did at least get the chance to practise
asking you some past simple questions in open class.
Progress on recommendations from previous TP
● n/a
Areas to work on next time
● Lesson planning: naming of stages. See above. In particular, take care to distinguish language
clarification from language practice stages.
● Balance of language clarification vs. practice. Take not to spend too long on clarification at the
expense of practice. Given that Ss were already quite familiar with the past simple, rather too much
time was spent on the clarification, and in particular pronunciation. It would have been enough to
quickly model the pronunciation of the past form, get Ss to say which categories they belong to, and
then do some drilling.
● Technology. A couple of tips:
o It's usually better to use your own voice, rather than recordings, to show pronunciation. If you'd
done this you could have avoided faffing around with the recording, and Ss would have been
able to look at the table while listening to you.
, o When sharing your screen, share specific documents rather than your desktop. It's clearer for
Ss and easier to manage!
This lesson clearly exceeded / met / did not meet the standard for this stage of the course because your
plan was logical and detailed, you clarified the meaning, form and pronunciation in a student-centred
manner, and you provided some useful (mostly controlled) practice with clear feedback. A good start to
your TP, thanks Adelina and well done.
, LESSON PLAN
Name: Adelina Gădinceanu TP no.: 1 Date: 11.10.23 Length: 45" Class size (range): 7-12 Level: Pre-Intermediate
● Main aim: By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to correctly form affirmative, negative and interrogative sentences using the past simple tense (with
the help of the auxiliary verb ‘do’) when filling a gapped exercise and in the context of having conversations related to past events; Commented [AT1]: You could omit mention of the gapfill.
It's a classroom activity, not a real-life goal.
Secondary aim(s): Commented [AT2]: Yes, this is the point. But what kind of
past events?
● By the end of the lesson, the Ss will be better able to identity past simple verbs as well as their form (regular or irregular);
● (By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to accurately pronounce regular past simple verbs according to the sound they end in. (/d/, /t/, /id)); Commented [AT3]: You don’t need these really as
identifying the past simple and being able to pronounce it
are surely integral parts of the main aim, not secondary!
Remember you don’t always need secondary aims.
Learners’ interests, backgrounds and prior knowledge
Commented [AT4]: Sensible points here.
● I assume that Ss will not encounter many difficulties identifying past simple verbs and their form as they have been recently using the past simple quite
frequently during different spoken conversations as well as written texts/ audios based on various topics (Proposal stories);
● I think that Ss will enjoy pronouncing regular past verbs to become aware of which ones have voiced, unvoiced endings as well as the ones which end in
an /id/ sound;
● I suppose that Ss will find the order of affirmative, negative and interrogative sentences a bit confusing at first as they sometimes mistake them, but it will
become clear with a bit of practice;
● I believe that Ss will find freer practice interesting and fun as it provides the opportunity to have different conversations in order to discover new things
about each other.
Professional development goals Professional development strategies
1. To give Ss clear instructions before they start doing the exercises; 1. Using short, uncomplicated and direct sentences.
2. Using ‘Instruction check questions’ to verify their understanding.
