This article is broken down into three parts:

1. Why create a lesson plan?
2. What to include in a successful lesson plan
3. Enhancing your lessons

Why create a lesson plan for your ESL classroom?
So, you've got the job and you're now an ESL teacher! Congratulations! As your first day of teaching draws nearer and nearer, you are wondering what you will teach and how you will teach it. A good lesson needs good planning. A good lesson needs a solid lesson plan. Your lesson plans ensures that several things happen in your lesson:

1. You have a definite language point to teach. Your lesson plan should be based around one language point.

2. What games and activities you are going to use. Certain activities work for some language points, but not others. Make sure your games are also age/level appropriate.

3. Your ESL lesson should have a purpose, it should keep building. Your students will be lost if your lesson jumps from here to there as they won't be able to follow where you are going.

4. A lesson plan acts as a warning against possible difficulties in teaching the new language, such as pronunciation. Because you have your lesson plan, you can allocate extra time or find great activity that helps to overcome the problem.

5. Creating lesson plans saves you time. Because you will likely teach the same lesson more than once, you can use your lesson plan over and over again.

6. Using lesson plans generally mean that you are following the same pattern for all your lessons. This helps to let your students know what's coming next, so they can focus more or learning and not what is going to happen next.

There are six of the strongest reasons as to why you should create an ESL lesson plan to make your classes a success.

For more information about creating lesson plans, including pre-made lesson plans, visit www.simplyesl.com.

In the next section we will look at what to include in a successful lesson plan.