Effective English lessons are fun, informative, and engaging for students. But if you want to deliver the best English lessons, you need to select content carefully and teach it in a way that’s appropriate for the age group.

As well as making your English lesson plans relevant and enjoyable, you’ve also got to provide ample opportunity for academic activities — like reading, writing, and completing worksheets — to help develop your students’ comprehension.

To help you tick all those boxes, we’re sharing English lesson plans for both beginners and more advanced students, as well as resources for engaging classroom activities. In other words, this article will cover everything you need to know about creating excellent English lessons.

English lesson plans for beginners

Nouns

For any young student, learning nouns and their proper use is a key milestone. Nouns are one of the most common word types, and allow children to identify themselves, other people, and the objects and places around them.

When creating a lesson plan for teaching nouns, you can use our noun worksheets bundle to guide your students through all they need to know. For starters, kick-off by explaining to your class what a noun actually is — hand out our “What is a Noun?” worksheet, and ask your students to point out the different nouns that surround them. From teacher to a friend, and book to a pen, this will help your class understand nouns by using physical objects they can spot immediately.

Next, use our “Find the Noun” and “Fill in the Noun” worksheets to encourage your students to independently identify different examples of nouns. This will consolidate your class’s learning and will help to build confidence around using and highlighting these words correctly.

Lastly, use the “Noun Monster” worksheet to conclude your introduction to nouns in a fun and creative way.

Alphabetical order

Teaching your students how to use alphabetical order will not only consolidate their understanding of the alphabet but will also provide them with a skill that’s vital to their success in and outside of school.

A strong grasp of alphabetical order empowers them to find books in the library or bookshop, get a friend’s phone number from their mom’s iPhone, and even search for TV shows on Netflix!

To teach your students how to order words alphabetically, start your lesson by using our comprehensive five-page worksheet bundle to help break down how this indexing method works.

And to really engage your students, why not ask your class to arrange their favorite films, games, and pop stars in alphabetical order? This will make learning fun, relevant, and engaging — the goal of any great lesson plan!

English lesson plans for intermediate learners

Their, they’re and there

The English language can be tricky, and it’s important that your students begin to recognize and understand the different nuances of written and spoken words.

Teaching the three most confusing homophones is a good place to start. ‘Their’, ‘they’re’ and ‘there’ all sound the same when spoken, but each has a different spelling and meaning, which is often confusing for young or second language learners.

To help your students understand the differences between the three, frame your English lesson plan using our 11-page in-depth worksheet bundle on ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’. This bundle includes multiple pages per homophone, as well as a fun “Grammar Police” section that will encourage your class to identify and correct when the wrong form is used. Activities like these will help your students develop their understanding of English, and will significantly improve their reading and writing ability.

Punctuation

Understanding punctuation is key to developing a child’s reading and writing comprehension. To help you to teach the basics, incorporate our 5 ready-to-use punctuation worksheets into your punctuation lesson plan. These sheets use various examples and fun activities like “Circle the Punctuation” to teach the proper use of commas, apostrophes, colons, and full-stops in a clear yet interactive way.

Combine these sheets with activities like group quizzes on the names of different punctuation symbols, and you’ll begin to notice an improvement in the reading and writing ability of your students in no time. 

Advanced English lesson plans

Synonyms and antonyms

For more advanced students, learning word types like synonyms and antonyms deepens a student’s understanding of the English language and introduces the different devices which can lift a piece of writing. 

Synonyms (words of the same meaning), for example, encourage students to use more sophisticated language when writing, while understanding antonyms (words of the opposite meaning) will help students to more effectively achieve contrast and juxtaposition.

To teach the difference between the two, our 22-page Synonyms & Antonyms worksheet bundle provides a great template for your lesson plan. Worksheets such as “The Right Word” and “Matching Up” are great ways to open the class, as they will encourage students to develop their vocabularies whilst getting their heads around what synonyms and antonyms are. Then, the “Sentence Application” sheets offer great examples of how to put this new vocabulary into action — ideal for wrapping things up and testing their understanding before the school bell rings.

Puns and double-entendres

Teaching your class word categories like puns and double-entendres is key to helping them understand how language can be used to communicate irony and humor within a text.

The thing is, many students (and even teachers!) get the two mixed up. When, in fact, there’s quite a vast difference between a pun and a double entendre. To help your class really understand where one ends, and the other begins, you can use our pun and double entendre worksheet bundles to organize and simplify your messaging.

Each includes pages on identifying, defining, and completing different puns and double-entendres in fun activities, as well as examples that demonstrate their differences. You can introduce both concepts at the start of class, then spend 20 minutes exploring puns, 20 minutes exploring double entendres, and finish off with a pop quiz making sure kids can accurately tell the two apart — and use them in their written work.

It’s time to teach!

We hope you find these English lesson plans useful. Take them as a starting point for developing your own lessons and you should feel more prepared than ever to step into the classroom.

Oh, and click here for even more English worksheets to engage your students with content that’s both informative and fun!