celta written assignment 1

Oct 10, 2023

Focus on the Learner - help with CELTA Assignment One

Updated: 19 hours ago

On a CELTA course , you'll have to complete four written assignments. Each assignment is between 750-1000 words. The assignments can be assigned in any order, but most typically, the Focus on the Learner assignment comes first.

The first part of the assignment is a profile of the learner, or learners. Your tutors may set this up in a number of different ways, and might ask you to write a profile of one student or of a group of students. You may be asked to collect an example of the student's writing or to record them speaking. Then you'll have to write a profile of the student.

Typically, you're asked to give some general background facts, like age, nationality and occupation. This should be easy! You're then asked to give some more specific information that might inform how these students learn or what they want or need to learn. This will include their first language and their previous learning experiences, but you will also probably be asked to comment on motivations and possibly on learner preferences or styles.

If you're discussing motivations, it's good to mention the idea of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Learner styles aren't really seen as very valid any more, but if you've been asked to mention them, the most common ones to discuss are visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.

I've used words like 'comment' and 'mention' because the important thing to remember is that you're not writing an in-depth profile of the student or students. You're writing a short profile of two or three hundred words. This is not a research paper for a masters degree and so if you've only collected a little information about the student(s), that's OK.

Because it's the first section, I've noticed that many CELTA trainees tend to spend a long time writing this part of the assignment, and then less time on the later sections. However, in my experience, it's the later sections of the assignment that tend to be the parts that people are asked to resubmit, so make sure to give the later sections plenty of time as well.

In the middle part of the assignment, you'll probably be asked to identify some of the student's (or students') strengths and weaknesses. You might be asked to comment on their ability with the skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) or just with language items (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation). Make sure to read the question given carefully, so you know exactly what you're being asked for. There's no point in listing ten points about a student's grammar mistakes if you were asked about their reading and listening skills.

The final, crucial, sections of the assignment are the ones that most often cause trainees to be asked to resubmit. You will be asked to identify errors that the students have made or language areas that they need to work on. The main mistake here is when a CELTA trainee is vague. You can't simply say that that the student gets tenses wrong. You need to say which tenses the student is mixing up. You can't say that they often mispronounce words. You need to say which sound they're pronouncing wrongly.

If you are specific in your analysis of the students' errors, then the final step should be easy. This is where you're asked to identify appropriate materials for students to help them with this error/language area. Again, in different CELTA centres you might be asked to do different things - some will ask you to find a freer practice activity, others will be fine with any exercise. What is essential is that it focuses exactly on the error the student has made and/or the need you have identified. You should also make sure that the exercise or activity you've found is appropriate to the learner's level and learning preferences that you described earlier in the assignment.

In summary, to succeed in your Focus on the Learner assignment:

make sure you read the instructions from your tutors and follow them.

don't spend too much time on the general profile at the start -- make sure it's clear and then move on to the later, more focused parts.

make sure your description of the students' language needs/errors is specific

make sure the activities or exercises match the needs/errors as exactly as possible.

About the author :

Dr Connor O'Donoghue hails from Ireland and he started teaching English as a foreign language in Poland in 2003 and he became a CELTA trainer in 2008. He has taught and trained in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Connor also holds a Masters and a PhD in Education from Trinity College in Dublin. He has previously managed large teacher training centres in Vietnam and in London before founding DC Teacher Training.

CELTA written assignment: focus on language skill

The purpose of the assignment

The CELTA handbook explains that this assignment allows you to demonstrate that you can:

correctly use terminology that relates to language skills and subskills
relate task design to language skills development
find, select and reference information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

That's a lot to cover in 1000 words so you need to be concise and stay focused. This is not the place to discuss generalities.

This is an overview only. For more on skills, go to the initial-plus training section on skills .

The skills look like this:

The 4 main skills can be broken down into subskills (and should be). These include, very briefly and incompletely:

skimming (reading for general gist)
scanning (reading to locate details)
intensive reading (reading for the fullest possible understanding)
extensive reading (reading to follow the gist or get the general picture)
listening for relevance (rather like reading for gist)
monitoring (listening to spot something important)
intensive listening (trying to understand as much as possible)
extensive listening (listening to follow the main points of what is being said)
interaction (speaking to oil social wheels and maintain relationships with people)
transaction (speaking to get something done such as getting a service, asking for information, giving an explanation etc.)
turn-taking (understanding when to speak and when someone else wants to speak)
long turns (holding the floor, giving presentations etc.)
brainstorming
understanding the audience
planning what to write

We may focus on individual subskills but should not lose sight of the fact that people use many of them in combination or that, of course, most speaking also involves listening and much writing involves reading.

For the two receptive skills in particular, the knowledge that we use to understand can, very roughly and very briefly be divided into two sorts:

our knowledge of how a text is structured and where the important information will be
our knowledge the world around us
our knowledge the intentions of the writer or speaker
our ability to predict what will be heard or read
the sounds and writing systems of English (phonemes, connected speech phenomena, spelling, punctuation etc.)
the meaning of the lexis and idioms of the language
the grammar of the language
how links are made in texts using pronouns, conjunction and other devices

Your centre will probably give you a set of instructions for your assignments. You'd be foolish to ignore these. What follows is generic advice.

Some centres give you a choice of skills to write about, some may oblige you to focus on two specific ones and some may even give you a free hand.

This assignment is quite broadly based because the regulations require you to focus on both receptive and productive skills in relation to a piece of material or text (and for our purposes, the term 'text' applies to both written and spoken language). Before you start, review the guide to Topic 3 of the CELTA syllabus .

This is in the genre of an Information Report and it has two parts:

A brief introduction stating the focus of the assignment and why you think the area is important. For example, I have chosen to focus on reading skills using the text in the appendix, specifically on reading skills needed by elementary learners (A1 and A2 level) operating in an English speaking environment because the abilities to extract the gist of what they encounter and decide on its relevance to them are crucial. I shall also be suggesting ways to use the text as a basis for a lesson on writing a short email to a friend.
For example, if you are using the text to practise identifying the topic and reading for gist, you will need to suggest what sorts of activities you would use and, crucially, why.
Now you need to go on to outline how you would use the text as a stimulus for writing, in our example. You need to say why the text is appropriate, what skills of writing you are targeting and what the outcomes in terms of developing the learners' writing skills are going to be.
If you have the space, you may like to include a brief conclusion saying why the skill(s) may cause problems for learners. You can also include this in the discussion above, of course.
For reading Grellet, F, 1999, Developing Reading Skills , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hudson, T, 2007, Teaching Second Language Reading , Oxford: Oxford University Press
For listening Field, J, 2008, Listening in the Language Classroom , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wilson, J, 2008, How to Teach Listening , Harlow: Pearson Longman
For writing Hedge, T, 1990, Writing , Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Harmer, J, 2011, How to Teach Writing , Malaysia: Pearson Education
For speaking Bygate, M, 1987, Speaking , Oxford: Oxford University Press Thornbury, S and Slade, D, 2006, Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy , Cambridge: Cambridge Language Teaching Library Thornbury, S, 2005, How to Teach Speaking , Harlow: Longman Pearson
For all skills Hedge, T, 2000, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Graphically:

Before you submit your assignment, here's a quick checklist. You can have this as a PDF file by clicking here or you can mentally tick things off on the screen.

I have chosen a suitably limited area to analyse
I have made it clear in the introduction and the title what it is
I have analysed the subskills learners need for the skill in question
I have linked the analysis of subskills to the activities I suggest to develop each one
I have said why the skill and its subskills may present problems for learners

Now assess yourself against the criteria for the assignment. Here they are again. Have you been able to:

Your tutors will maintain a record of the work you have done on the written assignments and will grade each of the criteria as follows: NS (Not to Standard), S (at Standard) or S+ (above Standard). You need to aim consistently for S or S+ grades, naturally.

If you have managed to tick all the items, well done. Submit the assignment and move on.

This site is a good place to start but you will also, presumably, have access to references of one kind or another (see the list above). Once you have decided (or been told) which skills you are analysing, use these links to find what you want on this site:

Lifecurious

Getting a CELTA Pass A: Example CELTA Lesson Plans & Assignments 👨🏻‍🏫

Here’s everything I learned in the process of earning CELTA’s top grade, plus something you won’t find elsewhere: Pass-A-quality example lesson plans, assignments, and more.

Are you doing a CELTA course and shooting for an A? Or just want to learn more about what it takes? You’re in the right place.

I’ll start by being more pessimistic, but then I’ll dial it back. First, here’s Jo Gakonga with a short summary of the CELTA assessment guidelines :

Jenna Cody also has a great write-up about her experience getting a Pass A, and how difficult/intense it was.

Both Jo and Jenna want you to know that you probably shouldn’t be aiming for a Pass A. Jo starts out with this line: “The rather harsh truth that you might not want to hear is that you’re almost certain not to get a Pass A at CELTA. They don’t give that very easily.” And here’s Jenna: “I highly doubt that someone on the CELTA course with zero teaching experience could get a Pass A unless they were preternaturally talented or had some indirect experience.” Then there are Cambridge’s published grade stats , broken down by country and year. The 2019 results show that 6.5% of students got a Pass A, and in 2018 it was 5.4%.

So how hard is it? Getting a Pass A will take a lot of work, but I think everything above paints too pessimistic a picture. I got it without any teaching experience, and I don’t think I’m that talented. There are lots of things you can do to improve your odds, and I’m here to help!

My first advantage was that I did a semi-full-time six week course, and I wasn’t working while doing it. Four week courses are probably the most common, and the limited time is why CELTA is described by almost all students as intense. I was very grateful for the extra two weeks in my course, and it definitely gave me more time to polish everything I did. So for starters, don’t do a four week course if you can help it. However, in order to find a course with a longer schedule, you might need to shop around internationally…

Choosing a CELTA Training Center

It used to be that you had to do the course in person. Covid changed that. Now you can shop around internationally and attend online, choosing the center that fits your budget, ideal start date, course duration, and time zone. CELTA is highly standardized and teaching centers get close scrutiny from Cambridge, so I’m guessing that tutors in most centers are at least decent. And no matter where you take the course, your tutors and students will all be speaking English.

I went with International House Mexico . In addition to being one of the best priced centers in the world, their time zone is friendly for US students, and most of their instructors turned out to be excellent.

Note that many companies teach Cambridge’s CELTA course, which was confusing to me at first when trying to choose where to take it. The biggest players are International House and Teaching House , both of which have many locations around the world. But there are many other training centers and universities that also teach CELTA. Cambridge’s official site can help you sort through them all by country and city, but its UX is not great. StudyCELTA has an easier to use search that lets you find places based on CELTA course type (online intensive, online part time, online blended, full time face to face, or part time face to face) and course starting date, but they only show testing centers that they partner with. I used a mix of both websites to narrow down my choices.

Example Materials

Probably one of the more useful things you can do (even more than giving yourself extra time for the course) is to learn from high quality examples. CELTA tutors will conduct some demo classes and probably give you example materials for some (but not all) assignments, along with example teaching practice (TP) lesson plans from a prior student or two at their center. You should definitely learn from those! However, the quality of the written materials may vary. Some will definitely not be at Pass A level. So here I’m providing examples of my own work to give you ideas about how to approach and structure things and give you a sense of the level of work that will be needed. If this helps you, please let me know in the comments!

These are meant to be examples only. Don’t use any parts of them directly. Cambridge holds the submissions of all past CELTA students, including me, and they put assignments (and possibly other work) through plagiarism detectors. They’ll deny you a certification at the end of the course if they detect that you reused someone else’s work.

CELTA Assignment 1: Focus on the Learner (FOL)
CELTA Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks (LRT) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Assignment 3: Language Skills and Related Tasks (LSRT) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom (LFC) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA TP6 Lesson Plan: Functional Language
TP7 Print Sheet — Streamlined copy that I used as my reference during class
CELTA TP8 Lesson Plan: Writing — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Self Evaluation for TP6
CELTA Self Evaluation for TP7

Hopefully, yours come out better than mine!

Although your written materials might help push you over the edge from a regular Pass into Pass B or Pass A , of course they’re not everything. Being an effective teacher during your teaching practices is the baseline, and is at least as important. So I’ve got more tips…

This will mean an additional 45+ minutes of prep for each lesson, but I found it so beneficial that I stuck with it every time. During every dry run, my first pass was somewhat rough and I was able to make adjustments that made it better the second time around when I had real students. It helped me understand where things weren’t working and also where I needed to shorten things to stay within the available time.
Your first few dry runs will also be good opportunities to make sure you’re fully comfortable with any tools you’ll need like Zoom whiteboards/breakout rooms, Google Slides/Forms/Jamboards, etc.
After submitting a TP lesson plan, prepare a streamlined version that you can print in advance of your lesson (see the example I included above). This printout should be easy to read at a glance and exclude any fluff you won’t need during the lesson (references, detailed language analysis, etc.).
Incorporate any feedback tutors give you into your very next TP if possible, or as soon as appropriate. They want to see you show growth and responsiveness to feedback during the course. If your style or preferred teaching methodologies are different than theirs, that’s fine to go back to after the CELTA course. In the meantime, you should follow the opinionated approach that you’re paying them to teach you.
Participate at least a little in post-TP peer feedback, and write meaningful self evaluations. Both are expected for students with high grades. To make self evals easier to write, I waited until getting TP feedback from my tutors and incorporated parts of their feedback into what I wrote.
It’s okay to ask more questions about assignments since that’s not held against you in the same way.
For me, my tutor said that if I was scored then, I’d probably get a Pass B. He also gave helpful tips on where to focus to continue doing better.
After my next TP, I asked if I’d made enough progress on the areas he mentioned to be on track for Pass A, and I got even more advice.
I was told that Pass A students typically include lots of scripting in their TP lesson plans, including for any instructions, transitions between lesson stages, ICQs (instruction checking questions), and CCQs (concept checking questions). Make sure your scripts are concise and use appropriately graded language for the level of your students. I started out a bit wordy, and continually got feedback about reducing TTT (teacher talking time).
Learn everything you can about your language focus for the lesson, and make sure to include a language analysis table or section in every lesson plan. In addition to this being important for higher grades, the time I spent on this helped me several times with questions from students. I had solid answers for them as a result of the research I’d done beforehand, even when I hadn’t intended to include the more detailed coverage in the lesson.
Since all assignments are allowed to be resubmitted once, CELTA tutors stress that failing an assignment on the first try is no big deal and that you can think of the first submission as a draft that you’ll get feedback on before submitting the final version. But I wouldn’t rely on this. Based on what I gathered from them, getting a Pass B will be hard if you need to resubmit more than one assignment, and Pass A might not be possible with any resubmissions. Take extra time before submitting to get your polish in on the first try.
One of my tutors said assignments have a 10% word count leeway, so there’s no need to spend extra time e.g. shaving off a few more words if you’re over the limit. But you might want to confirm with your own tutors beforehand that it’s okay to rely on this.
Be organized and on time for everything. My recommendation: Prepare a detailed checklist each week of everything you need to do that week (see the example below). The schedule given to me by IH Mexico was kind of a mess—it was hard to follow and too high level for me. Partly as a result, my peer that I worked most closely with occasionally prepared for the wrong things or didn’t realize an assignment was due until the last minute. My checklists made it much easier for me and made me feel good about completing even small things that I’d then get to check off.

Following is my checklist for week five that I wrote in Evernote (which lets you easily create lists with checkboxes). I marked things to show up live for (Zoom calls) with 🎙️, and deadlines with ⏰.

🎙️ Monday 11am: Live group class
Read tutor feedback for LRT assignment
Read guided lesson plan
Read examples and references
Read my prep notes from 12/04
Review demo lesson
⏰ Wednesday 2 hr before: Submit final online
Prepare print sheet
Read my prep notes from 12/04 and 12/09
⏰ Friday 2 hr before: Submit final online
Dry run beforehand
⏰ Thursday: Write and submit self evaluation
Read tutor feedback
Guided lesson planning session for next week
⏰ Saturday: Write and submit self evaluation
Unit 14: Correction
Unit 18: Lesson Planning 2
Unit 19: Writing
Unit 20: Recording & Recycling Language
Observation: Task-based learning: Justin Vollmer (1 hr online)
Ask tutor about delta between my current performance and Pass A
Read instructions
Read suggested resources and examples
Fill in CELTA-5 info for the week
Finish draft of to-do list for week 6

If any of this helped you, let me know! And feel free to share your own advice.

Are you preparing for CELTA? Then check out my post on the best English teaching books to help you prepare.

17 thoughts on “Getting a CELTA Pass A: Example CELTA Lesson Plans & Assignments 👨🏻‍🏫”

This is amazing! Thank you so much for your insight and all the detail you included! I start my CELTA this coming Monday! I’m also doing it with IH Mexico City, but I’m taking the part time course, so it will be spread out over 12 weeks. Fingers crossed!

Go get ’em, Pedro!

Hello! Cheers, i took my CELTA with IH Izmir i just completed my TP8 today im just hoping for the best although i must say the assignments really did my braincells dirty

Cheers, Dion! Congrats on completing the course. I liked the assignments (partly because I like writing generally), but they did take a lot of time.

Hello Steven!

I cannot adequately express how thankful I am to you for writing this article and including the resources above. I have been looking for an encouraging article from a CELTA graduate who passed with an A but had no prior teaching experience.

I saw your comment on Lao Ren Cha’s Blogspot page, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It has been so discouraging to continuously read about how one must settle for a ‘pass’ if they have no prior teaching experience.

My goal is an A pass as well, and I will religiously follow the advice here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thelma, it’s great to hear this was helpful! Clearly, you’re highly motivated and ambitious, and I’m sure you’ll have great advice to share with others after you’re done. Wishing you the best!

Thank you very much, Steven! I appreciate the encouragement!

I hope you are well.

I have returned to thank you for providing examples of your work. It really helped me to put my best foot forward during the course. I have just received my recommended grade and it’s a PASS B. What was that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? 😀

Nonetheless, thank you so much for this helpful article and the examples. Much appreciated!

Congrats, Thelma! Pass B is dope! I know you were hoping for the A, but I think B is equal to A in terms of opening a few more doors for people without prior teaching experience. You’ll be a badass teacher. 😀

Thank you for the encouragement! Much appreciated!

Thank you so much for the tips and details of lesson plans. I am doing Celta and it’s taking a toll on my health. I can’t grasp evrrything,it’s just too hectic to do TP today and then prepare for next TP the day after next plus not forgetting assignments etc.. i am sure if one can learn all in 4 weeks ?

Thank you so much for writing this article! It’s absolutely fantastic and filled with a lot of extremely useful information. I’ll be starting a 4 weeks CELTA program in April 2023 (didn’t have the option of a semi-full time unfortunately) and was wondering about the TP sessions for each skill…will the course tutors give us specific topics to teach or do we get to select which texts/books to teach students for these sessions? For example, for planning and teaching reading skills, do we get to decide what to teach within this for the teaching practice session to fulfill the language skills related task?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks, Babloo! In my case at least, the reading class was TP1, and because it was earlier in the course there was more guidance on the topic and what to include. I was given a section from an English coursebook to extract the reading material from.

This is so useful, thank you. Apologies if you’ve already said elsewhere and I missed it… how much experience did you have with the English International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) before starting CELTA? Thanks!

None. I learned it as much as I needed to during the course. You indirectly raise a good point, though, that it would be very helpful to gain at least basic knowledge of the English IPA beforehand.

Heyaaaa, just wanted to say that 2 years later this post is still very extremely much… SUPER helpful!! Especially the attached samples, carried me through. I’m in my final two weeks of (part-time) CELTA. (fingers crossed).

Dear Steven Levithan, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for sharing your valuable experiences regarding the CELTA course. Your approach and the exchange of ideas and information reflect your distinguished and noble character, which is highly appreciated and deserving of recognition. I have a few questions about the lesson plans you’ve designed. Firstly, are the topics of these plans requested by teachers, or do you select them personally? Secondly, after designing these plans, is it necessary to execute them live in the classroom? Lastly, during the live execution of these plans in class, is it permissible to use the template of the lesson plan, or should they be presented from memory? I would appreciate a comprehensive explanation, as well as any additional advice you may have for the first and second weeks of the course that I should implement or observe in the classroom. Thank you for your guidance and support. Sincerely, Hamid

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Related Tasks (LRT)

Looking for help with CELTA written assignments? You’ve come to the right place.

Written assignments form a major part of the CELTA assessment process and are a compulsory part of the course. There are 4 written assignments in total but some centres conflate two of them to make one larger assignment. In this series we will look at each individual assignment and provide you with some advice and guidance as well as highlight some of the common pitfalls.

Disclaimer: All centres create their own written assignment rubrics, make sure you check with your centre exactly what is required. We can only provide general information here, rather than specific. With this in mind, do you think it would be wise to pay for other peoples’ assignments to help you write your own?

Although centres design their own written assignments, the CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines states that for the LRT assignment:

The design of the assignment to include:

identification of significant features of the form, pronunciation, meaning and use of language items/areas and the use of relevant information from reference materials

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

a) analysing language correctly for teaching purposes

b) correctly using terminology relating to form, meaning and phonology when analysing language

c) accessing reference materials and referencing information they have learned about language to an appropriate source

d) using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

All written assignments should be 750-1000 words

Source: CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines

With the above in mind, how can you make sure you can successfully complete the LRT assignment? Firstly, you need to start learning how and what to analyse. When writing your lesson plans you are required to analyse language and the LRT assignment is really just more of the same, possibly in more detail. I would recommend the following books to help you:

Practical English Usage by Michael Swan

Grammar for English Language Teachers by Martin Parrott

An A-Z of English Grammar and Usage by Geoffrey Leech

Below are a couple of examples that we give our trainees when preparing them to write their LRT assignment.

Target statement: It was going to be such an exciting adventure

Checking understanding (CCQs)

When was the adventure, in the past or in the future? (In the past)
When was the adventure, after this statement or before? (After)
Was the author excited about the trip before he went? (Yes)
Did the author enjoy the trip? (No)

Reference: Practical English Usage, Michael Swan

You can look at my previous Blog Post for help with CCQs

Target statement: ….before putting on our wetsuits

Checking understanding

Use visual and ask:

Has he been surfing already? (No)

Is he getting ready to go surfing? (Yes)

Common Pitfalls

In our centre, trainees often fall foul of the following:

they focus on the wrong part of the statement
analysis is not aimed at the level of the students (too high level)
CCQs don’t really check the students’ understanding
they forget to reference sources
they over-analyse and/or focus on irrelevant areas
trainees don’t anticipate enough problems
they anticipate problems that are very unrealistic
they go too far over the word count

Any one of the above can result in having to resubmit the assignment. Whilst having to resubmit is no bad thing, it does increase your workload and stress levels so should be avoided if possible.

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Author: Emma Jones

A CELTA Tutor based in Munich and co-author of The Ultimate Guide to CELTA View all posts by Emma Jones

CELTA Assignment 1 'Focus on the Learner'

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Lessons from the Classroom: CELTA Assignment

The Lessons from the Classroom CELTA assignment is slightly more accessible than other assignments on the course, but it still deserves your full attention to complete it to a high level.

It is also an extremely beneficial experience as it engages you in a form of reflective practice. This is not only helpful for your development as a teacher, but reflecting in this way can also help you in other professional and personal domains.

This assignment is also a great opportunity to show that you have been continuously learning and applying what your tutors have told you throughout your CELTA course.

I should also add that for some centres this will be CELTA Assignment 3, for others CELTA Assignment 4. This is because CELTA centres have some flexibility on certain aspects of the assignments.

Either way, this post follows the rubric and guidance from the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, as found on their official site. In short, it will all be relevant for you.

So, to give you a brief outline, throughout this post I will go through the following:

Logistics and rubric of this assignment
Points to include in your work
Tips to get through it
Books to help you with this CELTA assignment
Useful links and relevant resources
Examples of various Lessons from the Classroom assignments posted online

Ready? Let’s go!

What is the word limit for the ‘Lessons From the Classroom’ CELTA assignment?

As stated in the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, the word limit for the Lessons From the Classroom assignment is 750 to 1000 words .

This is the same as the Focus on the Learner assignment , as well as other CELTA course assignments .

As with all of these assignments, make sure you are within this range! It would be silly to risk losing marks because you are a few words over or under the limits given.

What do you have to include in this assignment?

In this written assignment on your CELTA course, you will have to show the following:

That you can identify and are aware of your strengths in teaching.
That you know what you need to do to develop as a teacher and can and suggest practical ways to do this.
That you can reflect on your teaching, as should be evident from the points above.
What you have learnt by reflecting on your observations of experienced ELT professionals, probably your tutors or other teachers.

How can you evidence or demonstrate the points above in the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment ?

In terms of answering points 1-4 above, you can do the following:

Include a clear section on the strengths in your teaching, with specific examples. For example, state when and how you identified these strengths, and follow this with an equivalent section detailing some of your weaknesses.
Identify specific aspects of ELT knowledge and skills which you feel need to learn the most about.
As continued from above, if you are particularly unsure about teaching pronunciation, for example, you could identify in your assignment specific resources or workshops to attend to help you improve this aspect of your teaching.
Mention lessons and language points that you have observed ELT professionals teaching. Go into detail about surprising or noteworthy points from the lessons you observed and how it changed your perspective .You could also mention parts of lessons that you observed which reaffirmed or validated your own teaching practice, perhaps through things that you have already done in your TP sessions.

Tips for the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment

With the above points in mind, below are some key tips to help you complete this task to the best standard that you can.

Keep a Diary

Keep a diary throughout the course to help you reflect on all that you have learnt and the journey that you have been on.

You will have the CELTA 5 booklet that contain some space for this, however I would recommend using a diary or journal of your own in addition to this.

If you complete a few words in here at least 3-4 days a week (it doesn’t have to be any more than this), then this assignment should more or less write itself come the end of the course.

If you do not like writing in this way, you could equally keep a video or audio record on your smartphone or other device . Just hit record and go over your thoughts for the day in 30 seconds to 1 minute. You can’t say that would be too much!

You could even post to Instagram with a hashtag like #celtadiary (although there’s not much there yet!) and take a selfie each day. It doesn’t have to be a chore!

The problem is that if you do not do something like this, when it comes to the end of the course, you will likely be exhausted.

Without a diary or journal , you may struggle to remember these things, not least because you feel so tired with all that you have learnt throughout the CELTA course!

Be Specific

Hopefully you’ve got this message from the bullet points in a previous section, but just in case, here’s a little bit more on it.

When you are specific in your observations and writing, you make it much easier for yourself and for your tutors to understand exactly what you are trying to say.

You will also have many moments and experiences to reflect on. So, if you can, state the exact language point at a certain part of a lesson during a specific teaching practice session. For example:

“Near the start of TP3, I was eliciting information from the pre-intermediate students’ to confirm their prior knowledge of the past perfect. From their answers, I realised I had assumed that they would know more about this language point than they did, which caused problems for the rest of my lesson. This made me realise that making such assumptions could be problematic for future lessons, and therefore I decided to pitch subsequent lessons at a slightly lower level for that group.”

Using Clear, Accurate and Appropriate Language

If you’re concerned about your ability to write clearly, accurately and appropriately for this assignment, as is a key part of the rubric for this, below are a few things you can do.

The first thing I would recommend for anyone, native or non-native speaker, is to print out the assignment on paper and go over it by hand.

I know timing can be an issue which makes you think this is not possible, but even if you do it quite quickly by hand, I’m sure you will identify more issues than by spending the same amount of time checking it on a screen.

When checking on paper, treat this as if you were marking a student’s written work, take a red pen and add any corrections as needed.

I do this all the time for most of my blog posts (including this one), and for any formal written work I need to submit. Although the odd error still does slip through the net (!), I find many more errors than I do by looking at them on the screen.

I also quickly become aware of awkward language of sentences through doing this, again something which I don’t always sense when I am looking at it on a screen.

Another thing you can do here is to swap your work with someone else on the course whom you trust. Obviously, this is a judgement call on your part but if there is someone who you feel you can trust in this way, then just ask and see what they say.

Even if the person reading it is not a CELTA tutor, they should still be able to identify awkward parts of language or points which are unclear more readily than you, the writer.

Useful Links & Relevant Resources for this CELTA Assignment

For further recommended reading and resources, below are some useful links for you:

This guide to the assignment by ELT Concourse has lots of detailed questions to think about and consider and is well worth a read.
This video by Jo Gakonga of ELT Training is very detailed and helpful.

Jo Gakonga also has posted this slideshare presentation of the same video:

Books for the Lessons from the Classroom Assignment

In terms of books, you will certainly benefit from reading around the topic. Here are the most useful books to check out:

This book can help you to consider relevant areas for teacher development in your future in the ELT profession.
An extremely popular book which will serve you well before, during and after the CELTA course.I like Scrivener’s practical approach to writing and teaching and it will likely suit you if you prefer practicality over theoretical or technical aspects of teaching. His books always seem to be very ‘readable’, likely for the reason above.
This is a fantastic guide to improve your knowledge of and ability in teaching grammar.It has many relevant practical exercises which could serve as examples in your assignment, too.
This book helps to make teaching pronunciation clearer and more fun.Underhill is all about pronunciation as a physical activity and will likely make you think of speech in a different way as a result.
NB: All of the above are affiliate links, as with links to the diary and journal. This means no difference in price for you but, if you choose to purchase through these links, it helps to support CELTA Helper to continue to publish content and help people like you on their CELTA journey.

Example ‘Lessons from the Classroom’ Assignments with PDFs

Here are some examples frrom around the web that you might like to read. Remember – if you want to download from most of the sites below, you will either need to create a free account or possibly have to pay. It is up to you whether you want to do that but all documents are free to view!

I should also add that these are examples which students have uploaded. It does not mean that they are exemplary, rather that they can give you an idea of the finished work.

CELTA Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom by Iuliia Kumicheva on Academia.edu
CELTA Assignment 4-Lessons from the Classroom by Jai Kumar on Academia.edu
CELTA Assignment Three: Lessons from the Classroom by Joss Wright on Cite SeerX (which certainly looks like a trustworthy website from first glance)
CELTA Lessons From the Classroom by tranzit on Scribd.com

To round up, you should now be able to see that the lessons from the classroom CELTA assignment is much more about you being an active learner than anything else.

Following the steps outlined above should help you to meet the key requirements of this assignment on your C ELTA course.

If you also have this assignment in mind throughout your course, then you should have little trouble in writing it since you will be thinking in this way from the start. On the CELTA, self-reflection will help you, just as it will in your future work.

If you have any questions about this assignment that are still not answered, please leave them in the comments below and I will get back to you!

Best of luck with your assignment and the rest of your course!

PS You may also like to get your assignments or application checked by Scribendi – an online proofreading service (affiliate link) I used to work for that provides high-quality work.