Reflection on the Importance of Lesson Planning in TC’s professional Development I remember my lesson plans from my first week of practice teaching. They were a disaster compared to the ones I did afterwards. As a beginning teacher candidate, I really didn’t grasp the amazing capabilities of a well done lesson plan. I only heard of it and learned it in our classes in the University, but I didn’t have the experience of it happening to me. Besides doing a lesson plan for a University class, and giving two classes as a requisite for a class, the only experience I’ve really had as a teacher, is as a music teacher, and I’ve never had to do a lesson plan for that. When I started giving class in my practice teaching center, I did my first few lesson plans, and I recall them being a disaster because I didn’t feel like I was meeting my goals or really setting realistic goals. It was very hard and frustrating. It took time for me to figure out that sometimes I couldn’t give two worksheets a day because everybody learns at a different pace. Another thing I really struggled at first was being too general in my objectives. That did not help me at all. When I read my objectives to refresh my memory on what I was going to give that day, nothing would come to remembrance. Even though my objectives followed the correct way to do it which is the three main parts, a measurable verb, the condition and the criterion; my objectives would still not tell me anything because I would be too general or broad. After I learned that lesson the hard way, I figured out that if I was a little more specific, I would set my mind and focus on what was going to be done that day. That is when I started to progress in my teaching.
I feel my lesson plans improved through time and they also changed for the better when we started to do weekly lesson plans. Though many times I would have to change them because of unexpected situations where they would cancel class or my group wouldn’t come, and even though I didn’t always meet my goals; knowing what I was going to give that day, plus the next day, and the next day, and so on until Friday, helped me to see things beyond the present and that helped me to focus. For example, if on Monday I started a short story, and on Wednesday I wrote that the students were going to answer comprehension questions, then I knew that I had to do my best in doing a well guided reading so that the students would be able to answer the comprehension questions on Wednesday. Before I had a solid lesson plan, I would get lost and probably even wasted time, but preparing a well and organized lesson plan is a life saver. After I got the handle of my lesson plans, and I started to focus my objectives and fine tune them more, I could enter the classroom with more confidence and greater assurance because I knew exactly what I wanted to teach, and how wanted to teach it. Lesson planning helped me to guide my students to where they are now. It facilitated my teaching, and as an effect smoothed the students’ learning.