Lesson planning

An efficient working level of teaching is ensured by systematic and careful planning. A lot is going to happen on the spot in the class, sometimes it is difficult to completely predict how learners will respond to anything, but the better prepared teacher is, the better they are ready to cope with whatever happens. There is a good teachers’ slogan: Those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

The main aim of lesson planning is scientifically tested organization of the educational process and achievement of successful acquisition of the language in question. At the beginning of the course teacher should predict how to organise the whole process and be aware of the results, which have to be achieved at the end of it.

Foreign language teacher needs two (even three) kinds of plans to work successfully:

•The academic year plan (a project based on English School Program and curriculum. It contains topics, language material to study, learning objectives to observe, types of learner assessment and evaluation).

•The plan of a series of class-periods for a unit of the textbook or a unit plan.

•And the daily plan or the lesson plan for a particular class-period.

A unit plan is not compulsory for our school authorities, it is never checked, but it is convenient for teachers to be at hand. The academic year plan is a real working document for the whole year of study (or the course of study) as it highlights the main steps of teaching for a long period ahead and is designed in correlation with the Program. Teacher can use a ready-made academic year plan worked out by material writers in accordance with the programme of study and appropriate course books. However, writing of such an academic year plan is very often the responsibility of teacher. Though the structure of the academic year plan is not fixed, it is rather flexible and depends on: the demands of the school/educational authorities; traditions of the school; convenience of teacher, their own understanding of how to plan their work; students' age and their level of knowledge; materials used. Sample structure of the academic year plan should include:

•Number of lesson;

•Topic/subtopic of lesson;

•Language work (grammar structures, pronunciation patterns, lexical

material);

•Objectives concerning skills development;

•Homework.

The daily plan often contains two parts:

1)an outline of the procedure of the lesson (i.e. the description of the activities, their order and predicted timing);

2)background information (i.e. aims/objectives for the lesson, target language, materials used, predicted problems, etc.).

Different scholars and teacher trainers (R. Gower, D. Phillips, S. Walters,

J. Scrivener) suggest keeping lesson plan simple and easy to read, with clearly numbered sections and underlined or coloured important elements to draw attention to. Prose descriptions should be cut out, there is no need to script the whole lesson. However, some moments should be written down precisely: a model sentence, or a set of complicated instructions, or some questions to check students' understanding of a given text or a language point.

What should be included in a lesson plan? What are there some general areas to consider when planning?

1. Learners. It is necessary to take into account their interests, motivation to learn, age, attitudes, abilities. Will they enjoy doing the lesson? Will they benefit from it?

2. Aims and objectives. Teacher starts by stating the aim/aims or objectives of each class-period. The main aim / objective should be detailed, it might include specific sub-skills, which specific language learners have to understand and /or use, specific skills to develop. Learners coming to the lesson should know what they are to do during the lesson, what performance, level is required of them, and how it can be achieved.

The lesson objectives should be stated as precisely as possible. Often there is a main aim/objective and perhaps a number of subsidiary aims/objectives. For example, in a lesson in which skills are integrated or when a listening or reading text is used to introduce a language item, it is important that teacher and students recognize the main aim of the lesson and of each stage. The major portion of time in the lesson should be allocated to the main objective.

Subsidiary aims/objectives may have a large role in the lesson but not overlap the main objective.

E.g., the main aim might be as follows: Learners will be better able to cope with authentic news broadcasts by practising listening skills of (x, y, z).

One of subsidiary aims: Learners develop their discussion skills.

The examples of lesson aims and objective done below are not relevant as they are too abstract to be clear to learners and too wide to be gained for one class-period: e.g.: To help students to speak English better.

To teach learners to listen.

To develop learners proficiency in reading.

The long-term aims of the course help teacher to ensure that every particular lesson is pulling in the right direction and is another step towards gaining the ultimate goals of the course.

3. The teacher point/personal aims or objectives. For any particular lesson, in addition to the learning aims for the learners, the teacher may set a personal aim to pay particular attention to some aspects of teaching.

E.g.: To talk less myself and involve the students more.

To make my instructions clearer.

To involve computer software presenting new structures.

4. Procedure. This is the part of lesson plan which lays out the stages of lesson to ensure that the aim(s) is achieved. Teacher should indicate the plan

what will be done at each stage and why (the stage aim); approximate time; materials used; perhaps details of any complex instructions the teacher is going to give or questions he/she plans to ask. In order to do this teacher has to order the stages and the approach(es), activities, and materials that will be used at each stage.

5. Activities. For each stage teacher has to think what methods and techniques to use and what activities students will do to achieve the aims/objectives of the lesson. While planning activities and tasks for learners, teacher has to answer the questions like: How to present or revise a language item: through a problem-solving activity, through a visual or oral context (dialogue, pictures, etc.), or through a text?

How to develop skills?

What do students need before they can listen, read, write or speak?

How to follow up the skills work?

How to checkstudents' understanding?

What type of practise activities to set up: speaking, pair work, and/or writing? Teacher should think over a balance and a variety of activities and materials. The activities should be arranged in such a way that an easy activity must be followed by a more difficult one; a very active one with a quieter one, etc. The activities should be ordered logically - from more controlled to freer ones. Teacher should think over the character of activity proposed and his/her own role in managing it. Each lesson stage after some set of activities should be supported by an appropriate feedback which is got and given for the purpose of mutual understanding.

Some researchers (R. Gower, D. Phillips, S. Walters,) stress on functional value of lesson plan, which can serve as an aid to planning, a working document, a record. It is a convenient aid which helps teacher think logically through the stages in relation to the time available. It is a working document, useful to refer to in the lesson which helps keep teacher on target. Suitably amended after the lesson, a lesson plan acts as a record of what the class has done and might form the basis for a future lesson plan with a similar class.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-13