Sometimes teaching straight from the textbook isn’t enough for your students. Throughout the lesson, they still might not understand what they’re supposed to do for a particular grammar point, or in what cases to use it, or why it matters. It’s perfectly natural since different students have different learning styles. It helps for teachers to revisit such grammar points from an alternate perspective, giving their students a better chance of understanding the material (and a better chance of remembering it later). But as a teacher, you’re pretty busy, and you may not have time to develop a new method before your next lesson.
Good news: we’ve got you covered! Insights has already developed methods for occasions just like these, and we’re here to share those methods with you. Now you can feel more confident in the material, present those topics in a new way, and watch your students find those ‘aha’ moments.
Some students may have trouble grasping certain grammar topics the way they’re normally presented for any number of reasons. Sometimes all it takes is to present the topics with a different approach.
Insights’s methods are designed to be compatible with multiple learning styles, to feel more relatable, and to be easier to remember. Students who have learned topics with our Insights’s Illuminated Approach have reported feeling more confident in their understanding and application of English grammar.
Get an overview of the lesson. For most teachers, the lesson comes from a curriculum set by the school, often in accordance with a coursebook. Whatever you’ve been using, continue using that.
Look over the grammar topic for that lesson, and take note of the key points like the form and the usage, as well as secondary points like spelling peculiarities or pronunciation/inflection. The Premium Topics in our Grammar Guide pages include an overview of the grammar point, along with ‘What to Expect’ from the video.
If you’ve taught this topic before (or even a similar one), consider some of the difficulties that your students faced either in understanding the concept or in producing that grammar point themselves.
Grammar points tend to build off one another, and the videos assume the learners are already familiar with certain terms or related topics. Prerequisites might include time expressions, different verb forms, common sentence structures, or logic concepts, among other possibilities.
Our Premium Topics list all the prerequisites that we’ve thought of for you.
Make sure your students know and remember those terms and topics. For more complex prerequisites, you may want to review them in a prior lesson. You might be able to revisit simpler ones, on the other hand, with a 5-minute activity at the beginning of the relevant lesson. Or, if you’re confident that your students have a firm grasp on all the prerequisites, then simply move on to the next step!
Also consider any touchstones your students may have to this topic:
You may have come across our videos on our YouTube channel, but we recommend watching them on our Grammar Guide pages here on this website for two reasons:
Watch through the video on your own before the lesson.
The true value of the video is the methodology, while the details are more flexible. Keep in mind that the videos are designed for teachers, not students, so they might include shortcuts. You’ll need to adapt the presentation for your students, which is what this guide is all about.
Feel free to take notes as you watch. Does wording an explanation in a particular way leave a bigger impact? What are the steps, the patterns, or the rules-of-thumb used in this method? Was there an illustration or analogy that you find effective? How does this grammar point connect to related topics? What’s the key to making this topic easier to understand or remember?
Many of the videos contain two speakers, and their dialogues loosely model discussions you could have with your students. Ultimately, your lesson should play out a little differently as you put the explanation in your own words and foster your students’ involvement.
The videos cover the core aspects of their respective grammar topics, but many of these topics have a fair amount of complexity, especially when one considers all of the possible applications.
Some topics are taught at multiple levels, increasing their details as students advance, or including more alternatives or practical extensions each time. When teaching at an Intermediate level or higher, you and your students might benefit from knowing some of the finer points of the topic. It may be worth researching more about that grammar point.
If you’re using a coursebook, check out the grammar reference that’s likely toward the back of the book; these will often tell you all the relevant details for that particular lesson.
Each of our Premium Topics comes with a set of Bonus Notes, which include plenty of the relevant extensions, exceptions, alternatives, and applications.
Even when the topics aren’t so complex, it still might be worth learning some of those finer points in case your students ask a question about them. Or you could do so to advance your own understanding of the topic, giving you even more confidence as you teach!
You might need to print off, write, draw, cut out, copy, or otherwise prepare some materials for the lesson. Some might be used for demonstration purposes, while others might be used for a hands-on activity. Often, this part of lesson planning varies from teacher to teacher because it comes down to your own teaching style.
Premium Topics include printouts, some of which work well as posters, while others could be handed out to your students. Printouts range from word lists, to tense timelines, to step-by-step breakdowns, are more!
If your students don’t have coursebooks — which generally include practice activities — you’ll probably need to find and print/copy some practice materials, maybe from a standalone workbook, or maybe off the internet.
If you’re teaching in a virtual environment, you’ll need to prepare materials differently. There’s less work to do in terms of printing, copying, etc., but you’ll still need to consider how your students access the materials. Can the materials be downloaded, or are they online only? How will your students access them? (Can you email the materials, or at least a link?) What’s the best way to demonstrate with the materials so that your students can follow along?
Finally, it’s time for the lesson. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you present the grammar topic:
While most of our videos were made in such a way that students could watch them, that’s not the best way for them to learn. We believe students learn best through teacher interactions, which is why we want to support you, not replace you. Here are some reasons teaching our methods in your own way is better than simply playing our videos for your students.
If you’d like to use the visuals from our videos in the classroom, consider our slideshows. Insiders can use these for the graphics, but still have the freedom to express the lesson in their own words, move at the right pace, and invite interaction!
As planned, there should be some practice activities toward the end of the lesson to both confirm your students’ understanding and give students a chance to produce the language point more naturally. When selecting the materials and activities, consider enough for the following:
You can find practice materials all over the web and may already have some in whatever books your school uses. Although these resources are not available through Insights to English directly, we can’t stress enough the importance of practice and production.
Learning doesn’t end with that initial lesson. It’s just as important for students to revisit the topic and apply it.
If you have time — either in that lesson or in a following one — you might want to give the students a project that puts to use what they’ve learned. If time is more prohibitive, perhaps try a project that’s suitable for homework.
Insights has at least one project for each of our grammar topics. Insiders can see these projects on the topic pages or filter our projects by topic on the Student Projects page.
Don’t forget to review the topic periodically. Don’t wait until the end-of-year exam, but sprinkle little 5-minute review activities throughout various lessons in the following months.
As you teach similar or related topics, take those opportunities to touch back on these lessons. Doing so will not only reinforce what they’ve already learned; it’ll also prime students for the new grammar topic by establishing a touchstone that they’re already familiar with.
Our premium topics feature videos, but they’re more than just that. Those topics start by explaining what you can expect from the video, what prerequisite information students should already be familiar with, and what proficiency levels are typically associated with that topic.
Following the video are a set of bonus notes like exceptions, extensions, and more detailed information. Then there are recommended practice activities, suggested teaching tips, and related project ideas. You can also find downloadable resources like printouts and slideshow versions of the videos.
All of these can aid you either in forming a deeper understanding of the topic or in presenting the topic to your class.
Not all of our topics feature How-to-Teach videos. The other topic types are:
The 10TK topics are unique in that their videos are designed to be shown directly to students, although it’s best if teachers and students watch them together so that the teacher can elaborate as necessary.
As for the Discourse Topics and the Key Concepts, you should approach these in a similar way to the Premium Topics, even though they are a different style of content: Read through them on your own and take note of what you’ve learned. Then use that knowledge to enhance how you present related topics to your students.
The better informed you are, the more equipped and confident you’ll be!
Take advantage of every method, idea, tip, and trick we have to offer teachers. We’ll keep you informed of every new resource we release.