Every Hour House lesson is designed using the CAELA framework (Center for Adult English Language Acquisition), based on Madeline Hunter’s Direct Instruction Model (1982). This page is the living reference for that framework — what it requires, what it means, and how it appears in each lesson.
The CAELA Guide for Adult ESL Trainers (III-C: Effective Lesson Planning) is the foundational teacher training document published by the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition at the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. It defines the professional standard for planning, sequencing, and evaluating adult ESL lessons in the United States.
The framework uses the WIPPEA model — seven sequential stages that structure every lesson from activation of prior knowledge through real-world application. Each stage has a defined purpose, appropriate grouping strategy, and activity type. The lesson objective, written in a specific CAELA format, governs the entire lesson from stage 1 to stage 7.
Hour House lessons are planned against the full CAELA/WIPPEA standard above — objective, enabling skills, all seven stages accounted for. In the classroom, that plan is delivered as a leaner five-beat flow: Warm-Up → Presentation → Practice → Production → Wrap-Up (WPPPW). Introduction folds into Warm-Up; Communicative Practice, Evaluation, and Application collapse into a single Production beat, where students produce with the language they’ve just acquired rather than working through separately-timed stages. This is also the shape used for self-study versions of a lesson — Wrap-Up carries a short quiz, so a student working alone still gets a check on what they produced.
Research has shown that including this series of stages in lessons will help students achieve the lesson objective. The sequence is based on the Direct Instruction Model (Hunter, 1982). A comprehension check is always included in the Presentation stage and may occur at other stages as well.
Purpose: Activate prior knowledge; establish communicative context; generate interest before new material is introduced.
Purpose: Focus attention; state the lesson objective; motivate students for new content.
Purpose: Deliver new content; model the target language; check understanding before practice begins.
Purpose: Controlled practice; build accuracy and confidence before open interaction.
Purpose: Fluency over accuracy; real interaction; integrate new and old language.
Purpose: Evidence of learning; performance-based or written; directly tied to the stated objective.
Purpose: Transfer to real life; connect the lesson to students’ actual communication needs; extend beyond the classroom.
A meaningful objective for an adult ESL class identifies the context in which a specific communicative task will be accomplished. It focuses on one or two target language-skill proficiencies (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and states how achievement will be evaluated. The objective governs the entire lesson.
Four elements of a meaningful objective — every objective should have all four:
Common objective writing errors — these fail the CAELA standard:
Once teachers know students’ language needs and background, they can begin to plan. These five components are found in most effective lesson plans, regardless of which lesson planning model is used.
Communicative or real-life contexts gleaned from student needs assessments. Topics should reflect situations in which students actually need to understand, speak, read, or write English.
The goal for the lesson. A well-written objective tells what students will be able to do — not what they will know — by the end of the lesson. Written in the CAELA format above.
The vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that support the student’s ability to accomplish the lesson objective. These must be explicitly taught or reviewed if not already acquired.
The WIPPEA progression: Warm-Up, Introduction, Presentation (with comprehension check), Guided Practice, Communicative Practice, Evaluation, Application. Each stage moves students toward the objective.
Everything needed to execute the lesson must be identified and secured before class. This includes realia, visual aids, handouts, textbooks, projectors, and — in the Hour House programme — Claude (claude.ai), the WorldQuant Brain simulator, and the AXLE repository.
The CAELA guide provides a complete activity matrix across all four language skills. Below is the speaking skill example, which maps directly to the structure used in Hour House lessons.
| Stage | Speaking Activity Example | What Students Do |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-Up | Peer Dictation | Students take turns dictating words or phrases from previous lessons related to today’s topic. |
| Introduction | Teacher Question / Visual | Teacher focuses attention on the lesson topic using a question, picture, or real-life object. |
| Presentation | Model Dialogue | Teacher demonstrates the target language, highlighting intonation, rhythm, and meaning. Comprehension checked. |
| Guided Practice | Substitution Drill | Students work with parts of the dialogue, substituting new language or transforming grammar structures. |
| Communicative Practice | Information Gap | Partners ask and answer questions using the lesson structure, filling in missing information from each other. |
| Evaluation | Role Play | Students perform a conversation using the dialogue structure with their own ideas, without the model in front of them. |
| Application | Authentic Task | Students use the language in a real-world scenario: a phone call, a job interview, a presentation, a written submission. |
Each Hour House lesson is designed against the CAELA standard: a well-formed objective, explicit enabling skills, the full WIPPEA stage sequence, and an evaluation that matches the lesson’s skill focus. The Voynich lesson additionally implements the formal CAELA objective template verbatim.
Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA). The CAELA Guide for Adult ESL Trainers: III-C. Effective Lesson Planning for Adult English Language Learners. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 2007.
Based on: Hunter, M. (1982). Mastery Teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.
All lesson plans in the Hour House / Principia Orthogona AXLE programme are designed in compliance with the CAELA framework. This page is a reference summary; it does not reproduce the full guide. The complete document is available from the Center for Applied Linguistics.
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