Teach English in Shujiaba Zhen - Hanzhong Shi

Lesson planning is an essential part of teaching English; a good lesson plan can help teachers for organizing the classroom experience, for having a reference to get to each time needed, and for ensuring that all lessons, without exception, are effective and efficient. When teachers plan their lessons, they are likely to set up what students should learn by the end of the lesson and how to make this real, so teachers can accord the suitable time for each goal they want to achieve. Lesson planning are record for teachers, and thus it helps them to remember all previous lessons, knowing that it is not easy to remember all activities done for each lesson in the classroom. Planning lessons can also serve teachers for future lessons, teachers won’t need to create new plans for every year, since they have all necessary plans, though, these plans has be adjusted and updated over time, to ensure the relevance and the effectiveness among student’s learning process. Every teacher has its own way of writing down a lesson planning, some teachers can take notes in small papers, others can write all details in a chart, some other teachers write on class files. There are some criteria that teachers should consider when planning a lesson, for instance, keeping the plans simple and concise so that they can refer to it easily, keeping it flexible and adjustable for possible modifications in the lessons, maintaining the same structure, allocating the necessary time for each activity, making the activities connected to each others, and avoid scripting the content of the plans and being prepared for temporary improvisation. The content of lesson planning is of a great importance, here again it depends on each individual teacher, regarding his or her experience in teaching, to choose things to be included in lesson plans. Lesson planning has to be structured, and the following, are important sections that should be included in the plans: first, basic information, like teacher’s name, class level, number of students that may come to the class, and this helps teacher to know what are the suitable activities to do for a given number of students, date and time, to keep a record for teachers, to avoid repetition, for any inconvenience that may happen like being replaced by another teacher etc…Then comes, learner objectives or goals that students should be able to achieve at the end of the lesson. Another section, personal aims that concern teachers and states what they intend to realize and improve. The language point section, which is the subject or the theme of the lesson, and how it should be connected to both past and future lessons. Teaching aids section should also be included, teaching aids are materials to support the lessons. During the lessons, surprises can happen and especially problems can occur so there is a need to write down an anticipated problems section for both teachers and students, because this helps teachers to be ready for any problem and to have a solution rather than to stay confused and let the students to be more confused. After that, comes the procedure section that includes the activities that would be done in the lessons, each activity should be in the right phase of ESA methodology and interaction should also be clear, which means people who will be interacting in each phase of the lesson (teacher to student or student to student), also, teachers should precise the allocated time for each activity knowing that allocating time is a hard task to do, since teachers sometimes don’t know how much time students, for example, can spend in writing or reading. After making the lesson plan, there are several things that need to be assessed in order to insure a good lesson. Teachers should make sure that they have the lesson plan and the materials before starting the lesson, they should also check if all the equipments work well (if not, there has to be a plan B ready before the class). Teachers can arrange seating according to the activities or to their wishes, they also should make sure that the board is clean. As students enter the class, teachers should be prepared to start a small chat before the lesson to make the students are ready and motivated for the rest of the lesson. To conclude, I can say that lesson planning is significant for every teacher, lesson planning is not random, but has its own purpose, it should be well organized. There are basic criteria that lesson plans should respect, one of the most crucial, is the flexibility, teachers should be ready and prepared for any language problems that students may have during a lesson and should know how to deal with them and how to continue lessons without problems, and when doing something different than what is written on the lesson plan, teachers should add this details in the plan for accuracy. For a better using, every single teacher should monitor lesson plans, thus evaluate his or her own work, stating what are the good points and what are the areas of improvements, this can possibly help teacher to develop themselves and make classes more agreeable, entertaining and at the same time educative.