Basic principles of lesson planning

* Common European Framework of Reference for Languages of the Council of Europe.

II. The role of plan. The teacher can plan an essential course, optional course, extra-curricular activities. The teacher needs 3 kinds of plans: calendar plan, unit plan and daily plan. The first step in planning is to determine where each of his classes is in respect to achievement. This may be done in many ways: the teacher may ask the previous teacher, he may give a diagnostic test or have an informal conversation within the topics of the previous year. After that he can make an outline of the year’s work, consulting the syllabus, teacher’s book, pupil’s book and other teaching materials. Thus he compiles a calendar plan for the year. Besides, he compiles a unit planning - the planning of a series of class periods and a daily planning-the lesson plan for a particular class period. In compiling a unit plan the teacher determines the linguistic and language difficulties of the course and distributes them evenly over the number of class periods. The teacher selects and distributes exercises to be done in class and at home, defines what teaching aids and materials he will use. The unit plan includes the following points:

· The number of class periods

· The objectives of each period

· Language material to be introduced

· 4 language skills

· equipment

· home-assignment

The unit plan helps to compile a daily plan. The daily plan includes:

· What should be achieved during the lesson

· What material is used to achieve the objectives

· In what order and for how much time

· How the objectives will be achieved

When creating a lesson, a teacher must consider : the background of the pupils, the objectives of the lesson (the teacher can state no more than 3 objectives for a period),. the skills to be taught, the activities ( the activities and the procedure of the lesson should match the objectives) , the materials and texts, the time constraints and the connections to previous and future lessons . A good plan may serve as reference for future plans and also help to plan assessment measures such as final tests, term exams. Like most activities, a lesson plan has stages: a beginning a middle, an end. Lessons usually begin with warm-up and /or review activities. Teachers need to decide how they will connect the day ‘s lesson to the previous class meeting and how they want to motivate and interest their students for the day’s activities Once warmed up the class is ready for presentation , and practice stages of the lesson. These stages have been referred to with a variety of labels such as into, through, beyond ( Brinton, Goodwin and Ranks 1944); engage, study, activate (Harmer 1998), Lead-in, elicitation, explanation, accurate reproduction and immediate creativity (Harmer 1991); and verbalization, automatization and autonomy (Ur 1996). All of these labels describe stages in which first, the language form or content is introduced and presented, second, comprehension is checked before a guided practice is implemented and third, less structured, communicative activity takes place. The communicative stage provides an opportunity for students to integrate the new knowledge presented at the lesson with previous knowledge. Finally, students and teachers should evaluate how well the new material has been learned in order to determine the shape of future lessons. Creating smooth transitions and links can be challenging for novice teachers so planning these moves and noting them in a lesson plan is worthwhile. Timing can also be challenging for beginning teachers. The teacher should note in the margins the number of minutes allotted to the activity. Good teachers err on the side of overplanning and have some supplementary activities available in their repertoire of teaching tricks. Seating arrangements should be noted in the lesson plan, this can help class run smoothly and save time. Anticipating problems and thinking of the solutions beforehand especially when the teacher uses new technology or equipment makes him feel confident and comfortable when they walk into the classroom. The final section of the lesson plan includes review or summary and that indicate giving homework or other assignments. It is better to find a consistent place on the board and write the homework there beforehand.

III. Basic principles of good lesson planning are: coherence, variety and flexibility.

A good lesson has a sense of coherence and flow. It is not just a sequence of activities. On a macro level, links and threads should connect the various lessons over the days and the weeks of a course. On a micro level, students need to understand the rationale for each activity.

A good lesson exhibits variety. While for the most students the degree of predictability is comforting, to avoid boredom and fatigue, lesson plans should not follow the same pattern day after day. On a macro level there must be a variety in terms of topics (content), language and skills. On a micro level. There must be a variety in terms of pace, time, the percentage of teacher-fronted and student-centered activities should vary from lesson to lesson. Each lesson should have various classroom organizations (whole class work, pair work, group work, individual activities. The mood will vary as well.

A good lesson is flexible Lesson plans are not meant to be tools that bind teachers to some preordained plan. Good teachers think on their feet and know when it is time to change the activity, regardless of what the lesson plan says.

So planning helps to keep the big picture in mind, the individual lessons will connect to form a learning experience that benefits both the teacher and the students.