I Just Got My New Textbook: Now What?

How to Plan Your ESL Syllabus for the Semester

There comes a moment each semester, that, hypothetically, I look forward to. Once I sit down however, with my new textbook for the semester, I always end up feeling dread. You’ve just got your new textbook for the semester. And how it’s time to make a syllabus for the semester. Where do you even start?

Figuring out a semester’s syllabus from a textbook used to feel overwhelming and confusing, but now that I use this five-step system, I feel a lot less anxious once sit down to plan. Breaking things down step by step helps the entire process feel a lot more manageable.

So, here’s how I turn a boring textbook into a full syllabus for the semester:

1) Find out how many lessons total

Don’t even start with the textbook yet. First, start with your schedule. You’ll need to know going into this how many lessons total you’ll need to come up with. Most school systems arrange their time in weeks, so start there. How many weeks are in your semester? How often does your class meet each week? And don’t forget to factor in holidays or things like spring break! If you’ve got a three-day weekend with Monday off, that will affect the number of total classes.

2) Decide your exam

Now that you know the total number of lessons you’ll need to extract from this textbook, it’s time to consider your exams. Knowing how many lessons you’ll need for exams will also affect the total number of lessons you’ll need to prepare. Will you have a mid-term exam? Do you have quarterly exams? Is your final exam a written exam or a spoken one? If it’s a spoken exam, how many lessons do you need to complete it? Most of my classes have around forty students in them, so if I want to do an oral exam, I know I’ll need two weeks to make sure there’s enough time for everyone to go.

3) Count your chapters

It’s finally time to crack open that textbook! The first thing I do is take a look at the table of contents. How many chapters or units are in the book? Compare that number to the total number of lessons you’ll need. If you’re lucky, there will be fifteen chapters that perfect correspond with the fifteen lessons you’ll be teaching that semester.

If the number of chapters is less than the number of lessons you’ll need to teach, then you have two options. 1) You can split some of the chapters into two or three parts, so that one chapter will now last for two or three lessons. 2) You can add in extra materials to create your own lessons. Checking with your school about how much freedom you have to do this is a good idea, but in my experience, most schools don’t mind if you have a lesson or two that doesn’t come directly from the textbook, as long as most of your semester’s lessons do use the textbook.

If the number of chapters is more than the number of lessons you’ll need to teach, lucky you! Then, just choose the best chapters from the book to discuss and you can ignore the other chapters (or use them for supplemental homework or extra reading).

 4) Read through the textbook

Since you’ve looked at your schedule and the overall content of the book, you now should have a general framework for what your syllabus will look like for the semester. Now it’s time to get more detailed. I sit down with a pen and go through the entire textbook. What am I looking for?

Well, if the number of chapters is less than the number of lessons I need to teach, then I’m looking for chapters that I can expand on. Some chapters might not have a lot of material, whereas others are chock full of activities and vocabulary. I’ll choose a chapter like that to expand into two or three lessons.

If the number of chapters is more than the number of lessons I need to teach, then I’m looking for which chapters I should eliminate.

I’m also looking for opportunities to expand or explore more in each chapter. Most textbooks are rather simple and tend to lean too heavily on “book English.” I’m looking for places to add in a discussion with the students or to share something about my culture. For example, if the chapter is talking about transportation, I might jot down some discussion ideas about how we can protect our environment or share a little about the transportation differences between my country and their country.

Lastly, I like to mark the activities or exercises that stand out to me. These are the exercises that are the most interesting, the mosat useful, or the most practical. Doing this helps give me a birds-eye view of what chapters are more “full” of material than others, which could help me when I’m choosing chapters to eliminate or to expand upon.

5) Assign a chapter to each lesson

Finally, the last step is just to assign a topic/chapter for each lesson you have to teach that semester! What chapter will you use for each lesson? In my syllabus, I generally write the topic of each lesson, with the corresponding chapter. If you have two or three lessons under the same chapter, perhaps your topic will vary, or if it doesn’t vary that much, you could just write something like “Travel Part I” and “Travel Part II.” Now you have a syllabus you can turn into your school, and you also have a guide to help you make your lesson planning process go much smoother each time you sit down to plan a lesson.

If you have any questions about this method, or any questions about lesson planning in general, leave a comment down below. You can also check out tons of other articles about how to lesson plan and lesson planning ideas here on the website. Happy planning!