Planning Lesson before teaching english in class

Planning Lesson

            Lesson planning is the art combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that the lesson has an identity which student can recognizes, work within, and react to- whatever metaphor teachers may use to visualize and create, that identity. But plans- which help teachers identify aims and anticipate potential problems- are proposals for action rather than scripts to be followed slavishly, whether they are detailed documents or hastily scribbled notes.

a.       Pre planning

Before we start to make a lesson plan we need to consider a number of crucial factors such as the language level of our student, their educational and cultural background, their likely levels of motivation and their different learning styles. Such knowledge is, of course. When we are not yet familiar with the character of a group, we need to do our best to gain as much understanding of them as we can before starting to make decisions about what to teach.

We also need knowledge of the context and organization of the syllabus and the curriculum we are working with them and their requirements of any exams which the student are working towards.

Armed now with our knowledge of the student and of the syllabus we can go on to consider the four main planning elements:

·         Activities: When planning. It is vital to consider what students will be doing in the classroom; we have to consider the way they will be grouped, whether they are to move around the class, whether they will be involved in a boisterous group-writing activity.

We should make decisions about activities almost independently of what language or skills we have to teach. Our first planning thought should Centre round what kind of activity would be best for a particular point in a lesson, or on particular of day. By deciding what kind of activity to offer them- in the most general sense- we have a chance to balance the exercise in our lesson in order to offer the best possible chance of engaging and motivating the class.

·         Skills:  We need to make decisions about which language skills we wish our student develop. This choice sometimes determined by the syllabus or the coursebook. However, we still and what sub-skills we wish to practice.

Planning decisions about language skills and sub-skills are co-dependent with the content of the lesson and with the activities which the teachers with get the students to take part in.

·         Language: We need to decide what language to introduce and have the students learn, practice, research, or use.

One of the dangers of planning is that where language is the main focus it is the first and only planning decisions that teachers make. Once the decision has been taken into teach the present continuous, for examples: it’s sometimes tempting to slip back into a drill-dominated teaching session which lacks variety and which may not be the best way to achieve our aims. But language is only one area that we need to consider when we planning lesson.

·            Content: Lesson planners have to select content which has good chance of provoking interest and involvement. Since they know their student personally they are well placed to select appropriate content.

Even where the choice of subject and content it’s to some extent dependent on a coursebook, we can still judge when and if to use the coursebook’s topics, or whether to replace them with something else. We can predict, with some accuracy, which topics will work and which will not.

When we thinking about elements we have discussed above we carry with us not only the knowledge of the student, but also we belief in the need to create an appropriate balance between variety and coherence. With all of these features in mind we can finally pas all our thinking through the filter of practical reality, where have available, and the attitude of the institution we work in all combine to focus page shows, we are in position to move from pre-planning to the plan itself.

 

                                                                                   

 

Pre-planning and the plan

B.     The plan

Having done some pre-planning and made decisions about the kind of lesson we want to teach, we can make the lesson plan. This may take a number of different forms, depending upon circumstances of the lesson and depending also, on our attitude to planning in general.

B.1      The planning continuum

   The way that teachers plan lesson depends upon the circumstances in which the lesson is to take place and on the teacher’s experience. Near one end of a planning continuum, teachers may do all the (vague) pre-planning in their head and make actual decisions about what to include in the lesson as they hurry along the corridor to the class.

            Another scenario near the same end of the continuum occurs when the teachers are following a coursebook and they do exactly what the book says, letting the cuorsebook writers, in effect, do their planning for them. This is especially attractive for teachers under extreme time pressure, though if we do not spend time thinking about how to use the coursebook activities (and what happen when we do) we may run into difficulties later.

At the very end of the planning continuum is the kind of lesson described by one writer as the jungle path where teachers walk into class with the no real idea of what they are going to do.

Experienced teacher may well be able to run effective lesson in this way, without writing a plan at all. When such lessons are successful they can be immensely according for all concerned.

At the other end of the continuum teacher write formal plans for their classes which detail what they are going to do and why, perhaps because they are about to be observed or because they are required to do so by some throaty.

B.2      Making a plan

The following example of making a plan exemplifies how a teacher might proceed from pre planning to a final plan.

·            Pre-planning background: for the lesson, some of the fact of the feed into pre-planning decisions as following:

1.               The class it’s in intermediate level. There are 31 students. They are between the ages of 18 and 31. They are enthusiastic and participate well when not overtired.

2.               The student need “waking up’ at the begging of lesson.

3.               They are quite prepared to ‘have a go’ with creative activities.

4.               Lesson take place in a light classroom equipped with a whiteboard and overhead projector.

5.                  The overall topic thread into the lesson fits involves forms of transport and different travelling environments. In the coursebook this will change next week to the topic.

6.                  The next item of the grammar syllabus is the construction should have+done.

7.               The students have not had any reading skills work recently.

8.               The students need more oral fluency work.

·                  Pre-planning decisions: as a result of the background information listed above the teachers takes the following decisions:

a.    The lesson should include on oral fluency activity.

b.   The lesson should include the introduction of should have+done

c.    It would be nice to have some reading in the lesson.

d.   The lesson should continue with the transport theme-but make it significantly different in some way.

·                  The plan: on the basis of our pre planning decisions we now make our plan. The probable sequence of the lesson will be:

a.          An oral fluency activity with ‘changing groups’ in which students have to reach a decisions about what five personal possessions they would take into space.

b.         Reading for prediction and the gist, in which students are asked to say what they except to be in a text about a space station, before reading a check their predictions and then reading again for detailed understanding.

c.          Ending the story, in which students quickly devise an ending for the story.

d.         New language introduction in which the teacher elicits ‘should have’ sentences and has students say them successfully.

e.          Language practice in which students talk about things they did or did not to do, and which they should not or should have done.

f.          A space job interview in which students plan and role play and interview for a job in a space station.

The formal plan

Formal plans are sometimes required, especially when, for example, the teacher are to be observed and /or assessed as part of a training scheme or for reasons of internal quality control. A formal plan must contain some elements of the following are:

a.       Class description and timetable fit:

The class description tells us about who the students are, and what can be expected of them.

 

We also need to say where the lesson fits sequence of classes (the before and after) as in the following example:

 

The lesson aims: the best classroom aims are specific and directed towards and outcome which can be measured.

 

Activities, procedures and timing: the main body of a formal plan lists the activities and procedures in that lesson, together with the times we expect each of them to take. We will include the aids we are going to use, and show the different interactions which will take place in the class.

When detailing procedure ‘symbol’ shorthand is an efficient tool to describe the interaction that taking place: T = teacher, S = an individual student, T    C = the teacher working with whole class. S,S,S = Student working on their own; S         S = Student working in pairs; SS         SS = Pairs of student in discussion with other pairs; GG=Student working in groups, and so on. The following example shows how the procedure of an activity can be describe:

	Activity/Aids	Interaction	Procedure	Time
1	Group decision-making Pen and paper	a.   T    C b.  S,S,S c.   S       S d.  SS     SS (GG) e.   T     GG	T tells students to list five things they would take into space with them (apart from essentials). SS make their lists individually. In pairs students have to negotiate their items, to come up with a shared list of only five items to take to a space station. Pairs join with other pairs the new groups have to negotiate their items to take to a space station. The T encourage the groups to compare their.	1’ 2’ 3’ 4’ 3’

Problems and possibilities: a good plan tries to predict potential pitfalls and suggest ways of dealing with them. It also includes alternative activities in case we find it necessary to divert from the lesson sequence we had hoped to follow.

When listing anticipated problems it is a good idea to think ahead to possible solutions we might adopt to resolve them, as in the following example:

Anticipated problems	Possible solutions
Students may not be able to think of items to take to a space station with them for activity.	I will keep eyes open and go to prompt any individuals into look ‘vacant’ or puzzled with question, about what music, books, pictures, etc. They might want to take.
Student may have trouble contracting ‘should not have’ in activity.	I will do some isolation and until they distortion work until they can say.

 

Planning a sequence of lesson

·               Before and during:  however carefully we plan, in practice unforeseen things and likely to happen during the course of a lesson and so our plans are continually modified in the light of these. Even more than a plan for an individual lesson, a scheme of work for weeks or month of lesson is only a proposal of what we hope to achieve in that time.

·               Short and long-term goals: however motivated a student may be at the beginning of a course, the level of that motivation may fall dramatically if the student is not engaged or if they cannot see where they are going – or know when they have got there.

When a plan sequence of lessons, we need to build in goals for both students and ourselves to aim at, whether they are end of week tests, or major revision lesson. That way we can hope to give our students a staged progression of successfully met challenges.

·               Thematic strands: one way to approach a sequence of lesson is to focus on different content in each individual lesson. This will certainly provide variety. It might be better, however, for themes to carry over for more than one lesson, or at least to reappear, so that the students perceive some coherent topic strands as the course progress.

·               Language planning: when we plan language input over a sequence of lessons we want to propose a sensible progression of syllabus elements such as grammar, lexis, and functions. We also want to build in sufficient opportunities for recycling or remembering language, and for using language in productive skill work. If we are following a coursebook closely, many of these decisions may already have been taken, but even in such circumstances we need to keep a constants eye on how things are going, and with the knowledge of ‘before and after’ modify the programme we are working from when necessary.

·                     Activity balance: the balance of activities over a sequence of lesson is one of the features which will determine the overall level of student involvement in the course. If we get it right, it will also provide the widest range of experience to meet the different learning styles of the students in the class

Over period of weeks or months we would expect students to have receive a varied diet of activities: they should not have to role-play every day, nor would we expect every lesson to be devoted exclusively to language study. There is a danger, too, that they might become bored if every Friday was speaking and writing. In such a scenario the level of predictability may have gone beyond the sufficient to the exaggerated. What we are looking for, instead, is a blend of the familiar and the new.

C.                 Using lesson plan

However carefully we plan, and whatever form our plan takes, we will still have to use that plan in the classroom, and use our plans as record of learning for reference.

C.1      Action and reaction   

Planning a lesson is not the same as scripting the lesson. Wherever our preparations fit on the planning continuum,what we are take into the lessons a proposal in action, rather than a lesson blueprint to be followed slavishly. And our proposal for action, transformed into action in the classroom.

·                     Magic moments: some of the most affecting moments in language lessons happen when a conversation develops unexpectedly, or when a topic produces a level of interest in our student which we had not predicted. The occurrence of such magic moments helps to provide and sustain a group’s motivation.

·                     Sensible diversion: another reason for diversion from our originally plan is when something happen which we simply cannot ignore, whether this is a surprising students reaction to reading text, or the sudden announcement that someone getting married! In the case of opportunistic teaching, we take the opportunity to teach language that has suddenly come up, similarly, something might occur to us in terms of topic or in terms of a language connection which we suddenly want to develop on the spot.

·                     Unforeseen problems: however well we plan, unforeseen problems often crop up. Some student may find an activity that we thought interesting incredibly boring: an activity may take more or less time than we anticipated. It is possible that something we thought would be fairly simple for our student turn out to be different difficult. We may have planned an activity based on the number of students we expected to turn up, only to find that some of them are absent.

                        In any of the above scenario it would be almost impossible to carry on with our plan as if nothing had happened: if an activity finished quickly we have to find something else to fill the time.

                        It is possible to anticipate potential problems in the class and to plan strategies to deal with them.

                        However well we plan, our plan is just a suggestion of what we might do in class. Everything depends upon how our students respond and related to it.

C2       Plan a records and research tools

Written plans are not just proposal for future action; they are also of what has taken place. Thus, when we are in middle of a sequence of lessons, we can look back at what we have done in order to decide what to do next.

Our originally written plans will, therefore have to be modified in the light of what actually happened in the classes we taught. This may simply mean crossing out the original activity tittle or coursebookpage number and replacing it with what we used in reality. However if we have time to record how we and the students experienced the lesson, reflecting carefully on successfully and less successful activities, not only will this help us to make changes if and when we want to use the same activities again, but it will so lead us to think about how we teach and consider changes in both activities and approach.