Introducing planning (short and long-term planning) and its importance Recognizing the components of planning layouts Demonstrating the ability to plan for a lesson/unit/term/year
What’s planning? As I see it, planning is a management process that starts with goal-setting, finishes with outcome assessment and involves flexible and efficient use of the available resources in between. Successful learning is the outcome of asking the right questions such as: where are we? What do students already know? What more do they need to learn? What are the resources available? How long should it take? How can it be done effectively? What might go wrong down the road? This prior teaching stage develops several professional attitudes like: goal-setting, prioritization, vision, adaptability, smooth transition, flexibility, awareness of timing, reflective teaching, self-evaluation, well-established learner assessment WHY lesson planning in ELT? A lesson plan Provides a sense of orientation for both teachers and learners Stands as a part of classroom management Gives the teacher the opportunity to anticipate the problems that might hinder learning Enhances the instructor’s confidence and safety Serves as an official document for administrative purposes Serves as a reference for teacher development (portfolio, modification, self-assessment…) Facilitates students’ assessment as it is outcome-based/criterion-based NB: “Lesson planning includes not only daily plans (lesson by lesson) but also other types of planning which determine the overall flow for a series of lessons over several days, weeks or months. Unit planning is suitable for themebased textbooks. Teachers make decisions about the order and timing of parts of units, emphasizing syllabus continuity and progression in learner’s proficiency; however. Unit planning; in other words, helps teachers have a general view of what to teach, when, how, and for how long. Long term planning gives the teacher a privileged position to prepare long in advance any supplementary material, equipment (audio, video…) or tests needed. It also makes it possible to get learners involved by assigning research activities (or project work) before dealing with the theme of the unit.” Pedagogical Guidelines 2007 The components of a lesson plan: It is widely believed that there isn’t a typical model lesson plan that’s better than the rest. However, most templates consist of the same components: information about teacher, date, duration, number of students, room/school + objectives +materials+ procedures+ stages, time allotted + teacher role, students roles+ evaluation/reflection+ anticipated problems, suggested solutions… Stages and sub stages: Background/pre-assessmentTopic/Content (relevance to Unit studiedGoal (terminal, ex: ordering food) vs. objectives (enabling tools, ex: questions and voc needed). Both must be SMARTER Materials needed (variety, Reminder in Lesson Plan, readiness, availability…)Warm up (energizing, motivating, independent) vs. Review (more instructional, dependent on previous learning) Introduction(lead in/setting the scene) vs. Presentation (takes more time and more direct instruction) Practice (from mechanical to communicative in terms of purpose/from controlled to free in terms of roles)Evaluation (formal/graded vs. informal/not graded -> remedial work) + teacher evaluation/reflection Application: (Nunan’s Transfer) experimenting language in 100% authentic situations; if not, the teacher creates application opportunities that are authentic-like ex: online writing/conversations, TV…