Lesson Structure

This page explains the structured approach I've recently developed and use in my lessons and lesson design.

The goal of education, therefore, should be to develop autonomous learners—students who can “learn how to learn”. –James Bruner

I began creating my own lessons shortly after leaving online English platforms and working independently. Over time, I had grown increasingly frustrated with the repetitive and uninspired nature of much of the material availableI felt lessons could be far more engaging, and that engagement was not just a bonus, but a key factor in how effectively students learn.

Over the following years, I built a large library of PowerPoint-based lessons: warm-up activities, grammar-focused slides, and fully interactive main content supported by visuals, sound, and animation. These lessons were tested and refined in real classes, and they consistently held students’ attention. What I lacked, however, was a consistent and reproducible structure.

That began to change about a year ago when I started developing lessons built around short, original stories. With one advanced student, I took on a much more ambitious project: a long-form story set during the time of Simón Bolívar. In building that lesson, I experimented with sequencing; presenting audio before text, adding comprehension checks, and reinforcing vocabulary at the end of each section. The results were encouraging, but the structure itself was still evolving.

Soon after, I began creating much shorter and simpler stories for beginner students, applying a similar sequence: listen, understand, read, and review. These lessons proved effective not only in maintaining attention, but in strengthening multiple areas of language development at once. It became clear that what I was really searching for was a format that could bring together all the essential components of language learning within a single, coherent lesson.

This repeated, structured exposure helps students develop a much stronger, longer-lasting grasp of the subject.
–Bruner

Over time, that structure began to take shape. Stories settled into a manageable length. They are typically divided into 4 parts, each broken down further into 4 sections. Each part introduces key vocabulary early, followed by quizzes testing retention at the end of each part. Within each section, students move through a consistent sequence: listening, comprehension quiz, and reading. Spelling challenges and sentence-building exercises were added to reinforce structure after the reading slide while discussion prompts at the end of the completion of the four segments of each part give students an opportunity to use the language more naturally and develop confidence in speaking. Finally, in what can be termed the removal of the ‘scaffolding’ (see below) the part concludes with a prompt asking the student to retell that part of the story using as much of the supplied vocabulary as possible. They are given an opening sentence to help them get started. ¹

Using stories as the foundation ties everything together. Stories naturally hold attention, but they also provide flexibility, allowing me to draw on a wide range of topics that genuinely interest both me and my students; from history and environmental issues to sports, food, and everyday life. This makes it possible to create lessons that are structured and effective, while still appealing to the student. It also allows for an almost unlimited range of future lesson topics.

At the same time, I continue to work on improving the presentation. I feel the use of visuals, animation, sound effects, and interactive elements can play a vital role in keeping my students focused. Six years after feeling frustrated with traditional worksheets and static presentations I believe these carefully designed slides, varied formats, and consistent visual styles are the type of dynamic and immersive material that I craved back then.

As this process developed, I learned that the underlying structure had a clear connection to an established concept in education. This approach is often described as scaffolding: a method in which learning is broken into manageable steps, with support provided as students build understanding and gradually reduced as they gain confidence.

The term was introduced in the 1970s by psychologist Jerome Bruner, building on earlier work by Lev Vygotsky on the “zone of proximal development”—the idea that students learn best when working just beyond their current level, with appropriate guidance. In practice, scaffolding involves guiding students through a sequence of tasks, helping them develop new skills step by step until they are able to use them independently.

In my lessons, this idea takes the form of a continuous cycle: listening, understanding, practicing, and using the language. Each stage builds on the previous one, allowing students to move from recognition to active use in a way that feels both structured and natural.

At its core, this approach supports the development of real, usable English. While it continually challenges the student, it never goes beyond what they can reasonably grasp. Each part of the lesson connects to the next, and over time students gain both confidence and independence in their ability to communicate, with a much larger vocabulary as an additional benefit.

At the moment, I am completing two projects that I am particularly excited about: an intermediate story about a student who travels back in time to meet the historical figure Sima Guang, and an advanced supernatural story set aboard a 19th-century clipper ship, centered on a mystery involving a lighthouse keeper. With the structure now firmly in place, I am able to focus more fully on refining the storytelling, visuals, animations and overall experience of each lesson.

With this foundation in place, I really feel that the possibilities for where these lessons can go next are virtually unlimited.