When lesson planning , is it a good idea to include time to communicate the lesson aims to the students?
This is generally considered good practice and has the following benefits:
- When used well it can involve students more in the learning process.
- It forces us as teachers to be clear about what we want to achieve, how we hope to achieve it, and to state this as clearly as possible.
Detailed lesson planning
I find that writing in detail makes me distracted reading the plan in class. And I found that with detailed plans I would still forget a step.
But, doesn’t over-detailing procedure lessen the scope of emergent language?
There are two reasons for writing a very detailed lesson plan:
- To help you be aware of all the features of a lesson that you need to take into consideration. This is a good exercise to help you develop the skill of lesson planning.
- To enable you to prove your lesson planning abilities to another person.
In our everyday practise going into a lot of detail is often not very practical. The best plans I find are the ones that I can access quickly at a glance to get the main points. The main things I want to know are: What am I doing next?’, ‘How much time do I have for this?’ and ‘How should I do it?’
The process of writing the lesson plan forces me to do the thinking process before the class, but then when teaching, the lesson plan acts as a guide from which I can move away and return, as needed. Once I have a solid plan I can move away from it but know it is still there acting as a safety net.
Avoiding lesson planning mistakes
What mistakes in lesson planning should I avoid as a beginner at teaching?
I hope that the suggestions above can help you with your lesson planning process. However, I would give two other pieces of advice for new teachers.
- Go back to your lesson plan after each lesson and make a few simple notes about things that worked and things that didn’t work. Also, note down the reasons why in each case. If you can, make suggestions of what you would change.
- Try to identify any possible thing that might go wrong and think of a practical solution for each of these. This will help you remain calm when things don’t go as you expected, and there is always something that doesn’t go as planned, even for the most experienced of teachers.
Checking instructions
Even when I have checked and it seems everyone understands, if a student doesn’t perform according to what I’ve check then there’s an issue with language ability.
Instruction giving and checking is something that particularly interests me at the moment. I believe that if my students have misunderstood my instruction then it is probably my fault, not theirs. I can think of four reasons why students don’t understand instructions:
- The task might be badly constructed. No matter how good the instructions are, they will never make sense to some students because of some inherent flaw at the level of the task.
- Your instructions might be incoherent. I have observed classes where there were inconsistencies in the instructions. This is why the practice of occasionally taking activities and writing out the instructions in full, then checking them with instruction checking questions (or ICQs) is such a powerful exercise.
- The level of the language in the instructions or task might be too high for students. We need to make sure the language is carefully graded.
- Students might not be paying attention because they were distracted or not interested.
If we have addressed these four points then we can assume that most students will know what to do, but we should then immediately monitor to make sure everyone is on task.
Lesson plans for dyslexic students
Can you give an example of a lesson plan/type of activity for students with dyslexia? Any sources we can use?
This question asks about lesson plans for dyslexic students. Being dyslexic myself, I feel I can give some advice about this. It is important not to expose a dyslexic student’s weaknesses but to provide them with a range of ways to process information. In two previous blog posts, I gave suggestions for using audio scripts and for doing while-reading activities. The suggestions in these posts go some way to address the two points mentioned above.
• 25 alternatives to reading aloud around the class: https://teachingenglishwithoxford.oup.com2017/01/17/25-alternatives-to-reading-aloud-around-the-class/
• 25 ideas for using audio scripts in the ELT classroom: https://teachingenglishwithoxford.oup.com2016/09/20/25-ideas-for-using-audio-scripts-in-the-elt-classroom/
If you missed the webinar and want to catch up, feel free to visit our Webinar Library, for this session and previous recordings.
Philip Haines is the Senior Consultant for Oxford University Press, Mexico. As well as being a teacher and teacher trainer, he is also the co-author of several series, many of which are published by OUP. Earlier this month, he delivered a webinar on ‘The essentials of lesson planning’, and today we bring you the question and answer section of the session.