Lesson Plan

7 Key excerpts on "Lesson Plan"

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  Practice in TESOL

  • Fiona Farr(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Edinburgh University Press

    (Publisher)

  72 5 THE Lesson Plan 5.1 INTRODUCTION Whilst not directly addressing the question of choice of language teaching method-ology, which itself merits a much more detailed discussion than this volume allows (see, for example, Spiro 2013, Thornbury 2011), this chapter on Lesson Planning will be strongly informed by the broad theoretical school(s) of thought to which you affili-ate. This, of course, will most probably change over periods of time and perhaps even between lessons, depending on your specific aims and focus. In order for this chapter to be practically useful for you, however, you should familiarise yourself with the methodological options available, what they offer in terms of the whats, the whys and the hows of teaching. This will give you a strong theoretical and practical toolkit to bring with you to the job of planning a lesson, which is the focus of this chapter. There are many good reasons for investing time in the preparation of a Lesson Plan. The very act of writing the plan in most cases aids the logical thinking process, in the same way that writing, as a means of articulation, generally helps clarity of thought and allows for active reflection in advance of the event. You will find that seeing the draft plan on paper sometimes prompts you to modify it and edit it in rational ways to help improve the overall coherence. Crookes suggests that ‘detailed Lesson Planning pro-vides a concretization of practice, or at least of intended practice, and as such is also a tool for distancing oneself from practice so as to reflect upon it’ (Crookes 2003: 101). In addition, having a plan in class provides an important reference point for the detailed information that you will need in order to work your way successfully through your lesson.

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  Teaching the Language Arts

  Forward Thinking in Today's Classrooms

  • Denise Johnson, Elizabeth Dobler, Thomas DeVere Wolsey(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Two Planning and Assessment in the Language Arts

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003041993-2

  Key Ideas

  • Lesson Planning is an integrated act of thinking about overarching goals that are often reflected as standards.
  • While there are many formats for Lesson Plans, most share key attributes.
  • Lesson Plans require interactive adjustments as the lesson unfolds.
  • Assessment informs instruction thus making it part of an integrated whole.

  He who fails to plan is planning to fail. (Winston Churchill)

  2.1 The Role of Planning in Teaching

  T eaching may seem at first to be simply a presentation of material that constitutes a lesson; however, this definition is too simplistic. Teaching involves understanding curricular goals set forth in standards, pacing guides, and teachers’ editions of textbooks. Teaching means knowing your students and how to help them meet those curricular goals. It means knowing how your students are progressing and making the necessary adjustments to help them meet learning goals without losing them in the process. Just as important, teaching involves understanding the concerns of parents, faculty colleagues, administrators, legislators, and other policy makers. This may sound like an impossible balancing act but meeting these demands in a way that results in student learning and meeting instructional goals is at the heart of what it means to be a teacher. The foundation for success in teaching is planning. While teachers want to work with their students, sufficient planning is the starting point for success. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter suggests, failing to plan ends with failure. For teachers, this is critically important because when they are not successful, neither are their students.

  A WORD ABOUT CURRICULUM

  Curriculum is a term often heard in staff rooms, colleges of education, legislative halls, and school district offices. Most teachers know what curriculum is, but defining it is not as easy as it sounds. Wiles and Bondi (1984)

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  Aspects of Teaching Secondary Modern Foreign Languages

  Perspectives on Practice

  • Ann Swarbrick(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Table 10.2  Faculty scheme of work for one section of Camarades 1 objectif 2 (school scheme of work adapted from Camarades 1, Teacher’s Book, p. 8)

  Table 10.3  Aweekly plan

  It is worth breaking up the medium-term plan into weekly plans so that continuity (the tight follow-on from one lesson to the next, from one episode of learning to the next) and progression can be mapped out across the week. These are broad-brush strokes that indicate the content that will be covered, plus possible activities when particularly suitable ones come to mind. Although not so crucial, it might also be advantageous to jot down how non-contact time could be most profitably used (see Table 10.3 , Tuesday, lesson 4).

  Constituents of a single Lesson Plan

  The context of the lesson

  Before reflecting on the constituent parts of individual Lesson Plans, it is worth considering their purpose. A Lesson Plan could be said to be a prop for the teacher that ensures that children are taught what they need to be taught according to the schemes of work and the National Curriculum. To be a prop, the Lesson Plan needs to be easily readable in the lesson. The balance between writing in great detail and using very concise notes will vary according to the knowledge of the topic and the experience of the teacher. Lesson Plans are working documents that should respond to the user’s needs. It is likely that at the beginning of a teaching career, the plans will be reasonably detailed, as they need to reveal the planner’s thinking process and intentions.

  Before entering the detail of the lesson, it is important to give its context, however succinctly.

  This enables us to focus on the lesson’s essential features: the class being taught, its size (important for seating arrangements and number of worksheets) and their attainment range; the room in which the teaching will take place (27Z looks over the school football pitch – the planning needs to allow for the possible unfair competition from the football pitch and the likely noise that will make the listening comprehension or speaking exercise more demanding). The time of the lesson also provides useful information – after PE and just before lunch: the class might arrive in dribs and drabs and be tired and restless: planning must take account of this.

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  Teaching and Learning the English Language

  A Problem-Solving Approach

  • Richard Badger(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  However, such classes only happen as a result of effective preparation and planning (Butt, 2008, p. 2). The four key components for a Lesson Plan are: 1. Purpose – what goals and objectives does the teacher want the learners to achieve by the end of the lesson? 65 Programme and Lesson Planning 2. Activities – what activities will the learners engage in to achieve those goals and objectives? 3. Resources – what resources will the teacher need to enable those activities? 4. Evaluation – what will be the evidence that the goals and objectives have been achieved? Activity 5.3. Lesson Planning skills 1. Which of the following items would you regard as appropriate lesson goals and objectives? Which would you see as too general? Which are not related to do with learning? a. Learners will complete the listening comprehension exercise in the course book. b. Learners will be able to communicate effectively in writing. c. Learners will be able to write an informal email. d. Learners will be able to identify new and old information in short spoken sentences. e. Learners will describe a picture using the present continuous tense. 2. How would you sequence these activities within a lesson on houses for upper-intermediate learn- ers? (Adapted from Rifkin, 2003, p. 176) a. Learners read an article from a blog about differences in house designs between different regions of the United States. b. Learners write an essay entitled ‘My perfect home’. c. Learners are given a house plan from a sale brochure. In pairs, they each describe their plan to their partner, sight unseen, who then draws the plan. d. Learners watch a five-minute extract from a sales video for a house. 3. Giving instructions How would you organize the seating for the ‘describe and draw’ activity in 2c in this activity? Write out instructions in English for the activity that would be appropriate for upper-intermediate learners.

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  The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3

  • Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, Melanie Williams(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge English

    (Publisher)

  Skills-based lessons, however, aim at developing learners’ abilities in receptive and/or productive language skills, and rather than focusing on particular language items, they give learners the opportunity to work on specific subskills, though subsidiary aims and their related procedures may well focus on language. 141 Planning a sequence of lessons A scheme of work helps us plan a sequence of lessons in the best way to cover the school syllabus or the units of a coursebook in the time available. It also helps us to think about what we want to achieve and what materials we might need. And it helps us to include enough variety across our lessons. Teacher and learners need clear aims beyond the single lesson and need to see how lessons are linked to each other.

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  Second Language Educational Experiences for Adult Learners

  • John M. Norris, John McE. Davis, Veronika Timpe-Laughlin(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Objectives or outcomes may also be stated at finer grained levels and with distinct purposes. Thus, within a given course, teachers may produce objectives for individual units of instruction, lessons within units, and even stages within a lesson. The focus of these objectives might be on expected learner activities and behaviors, teacher actions, intended use of materials, and so on. That is, at this microlevel, objectives might indicate how language teaching and learning processes are supposed to occur and what should happen as a result. Outcomes for a course, then, might point to learning products or achievements that are the targeted expectations for the end of a sequence such as a semester of instruction. Indeed, at this level, both objectives and outcomes are best presented in language that is understood by both students and teachers, that helps them orient to what the purpose is behind lesson activities and syllabus sequence, and that helps them reflect on or assess their own understanding and progress within the lesson and over a sequence of lessons. Goals, outcomes, and objectives, then, might be seen as ever narrower representations of what the curriculum seeks to accomplish and, to some extent, how pedagogic practices are intended to contribute to that accomplishment.

  Evidence-Based Instruction

  Second language educators are increasingly held accountable and, thus, required to carefully plan and document the teaching-learning process; that is, they need to provide reliable, trustworthy, and valid evidence that indicates that, through their instruction, L2 learners can be expected to make adequate gains in L2 acquisition.

  Syllabus, Course Structure, and Sequencing

  Although defined differently by different scholars, a syllabus is generally understood as “a specification of the content of a course of instruction and lists what will be taught and tested” (Richards, 2001, p. 2). Thus, syllabi constitute ways of organizing the course and materials insofar as they provide (a) a focus for what should be studied and (b) a rationale for how to organize, structure, and sequence the contents (Brown, 1995, 2012b; Richards, 2001; Robinson, 2009). Hence, a syllabus formalizes the content that needs to be learned in a domain of knowledge or skills and “arranges this content in a succession of interim objectives” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 127).

  In general, four dimensions need to be accounted for in L2 syllabus and course development (see Richards, 2001, or Robinson, 2009, for in-depth discussions): (a) a course or unit rationale, (b) L2 proficiency entry and exit levels of learners, (c) content and materials selection, and (d) structure and sequence of contents. First, a course rationale

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  Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching

  • Julieta Arjona Sumague(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  An understanding of the basic attributes of methods in language teaching can be gained by conceiving the notion of method more systematically. These methods are discussed in detail in another chapter. 1.4. OBJECTIVES OF LANGUAGE TEACHING Language teaching objectives define the purpose of the lesson. It sets out what skills the learners will be acquiring in reading, listening, writing, speaking as well as thinking. When developing a language objective, the teacher must think what the students are going to learn that can enhance their language skills. Various language objectives can be included in the curriculum as per the goals and activities of the lesson. In some lessons the objective may to emphasize on the learner’s vocabulary. Others may be concerned with reading comprehension skills An Introduction to Language Teaching 11 or writing practice. Teaching objectives also include helping the learners brainstorm, outline, draft, revise and complete a text. Language teaching often is incorporated in other subjects like math, science or history in school education. Some examples how content and language objective can be achieved together are: 1. Example 1 Content Objective: The students are to be taught to explore attributes using geometric figures and make inferences about geometric relationships. Language Objectives: The students should develop the ability to use mathematical vocabulary and explain the attributes of geometric figure. 2. Example 2 Content Objective: The students should be able to compare and contrast the physical adaptations of sharks and whales which help these mammals survive. Language Objective: The students must frame a paragraph using vocabulary generally used in the language function of compare and contrast. 1.4.1. Vocabulary Objectives Vocabulary is an important part of language. Emphasizing on vocabulary is important so that students can master the content objective.

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