1- My lessons planning method is more likely to be similar to Mr. Poelo's although I have a course book, which I have to follow.
Actually for me -having a course boob- I do not have many free spaces to change the order of the skills performance. I mean that every day I have to start with reading; a real life limited conversation, language focus then reading again. In addition, I do not practice speaking with them because I am mostly the tutorial teacher and the students have to have another teacher for the speaking skill. Therefore, my method is to check the lesson aims first then I go through the lesson trying to find the parts, which match the aims to go deeper on them. Which mean my method is the End-mean. Method. By the end of the lesson, I sometimes check the lesson's aims with the students to make sure that they get them correctly.
About the activities, I use several of activities but I will mention one example. I use the "small white board". In this activity, I ask the students to practice the language focus part by writing the wrong examples. After that, they exchange the boards to correct the other students' mistakes.
3- In my lesson plans, I always use the course book "due to the company rules". Therefore, I start with the aims regarding the course book. Then I try to apply my OWN methods, which will make the general ideas of the lesson "fit"