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LESSON
PLANNING
17 January,
2005
We kicked off with a brief
discussion centered on the question - What possible use can there be for a
lesson plan? Here's what we came up with:
- Helping the teacher with
pace and timing of a class.
- Creating a focus for the
teacher and also for the students.
- Showing everyone what
material is being covered, needs to be covered or has been covered;
particularly useful if you have a strict syllabus to follow.
- There seems to be a need
for a balance though between covering material and choosing when to let
a class flow and let students carry on an activity if it's leading to
learning.
- Giving clear aims, and
sub-aims to students and teacher. (Aims may be for the students or for
the teacher. There are 2 perspectives to consider)
- Reminding teachers to put
aims first and materials second, (not vice versa).
- Highlighting potential and
real student problems, and creating an opportunity to find a solution.
- Bringing cohesion and
coherence to a lesson.
- Showing clearly the
interaction between teacher and student.
- Showing clearly the
distribution of time spent on different skills. This can really show if
your Speaking class really is about speaking!
- Reminding you what
materials you have to take into class.
These later points can be seen
if a lesson plan like the one Rik offered us (see attachment) is followed.
Everyone has their own style of
doing a lesson plan and this was seen in the second part of the meeting,
which was a workshop involving collaboratively making lesson plans for up and
coming classes.
The workshop was full of ideas
that are hard to relate here, but from the discussion came ideas of use of
video/DVD and articles as a platform for speaking activities. These are great
topics that we will be covering in the near future.
Some good ideas came up for
keeping lesson plans as a benchmark.
After storing plans for years it
became clear to me that no 2 classes were alike and the potential for re-cycling
lesson plans was remote. However, one suggestion on Monday was to keep the
ideas, rather than the whole plan. These can be kept on postcards that are
organized by topic (maybe with cross references for level, skill or
structure) and then kept in a container for easy access.
Of course for the more modern of
you the same can be done on a computer!
Recommended reading from this
meeting was - LESSONS FROM NOTHING (B. Marshland) Published locally and
available from BJ foreign language bookshop for the price of a cup of coffee!
If you are interested in knowing
how others do their lesson plans or just simply need a lesson plan now,
because you are over worked and have no time!! ......try some of the websites
listed in the file about websites
(webmaster’s note: keeping in mind that this meeting was held in 2004,
some web links may no longer exist).
Good luck and whilst lesson
plans are extremely useful I think we should remember the adage: Teach
the students, not the plan!
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