Teach English in Huyang Zhen - Linyi Shi

Most likely, a teacher is required to prepare the lesson planning before each class because general speaking, lesson planning is the guide for the day's lessons.So what is a lesson planning? There is some confusion about what a TEFL lesson plan is and is not. A worksheet is not a lesson plan. A handout is not a lesson plan. A classroom game or activity is not a lesson plan. In fact, there is no need for a lesson plan to ever be seen, touched, considered or dreamed of by students, and nor does it even need to exist on paper or disk, though it usually does. A lesson plan is a teacher's plan for teaching a lesson. It can exist in the teacher's mind, on the back of an envelope, or on one or more beautifully formatted sheets of paper. Its purpose is to outline the "program" for a single lesson. That's why it's called a lesson plan. It helps the teacher in both planning and executing the lesson. And it helps the students, unbeknownst to them, by ensuring that they receive an actual lesson with a beginning, a middle and an end, that aims to help them learn some specific thing that they didn't know at the beginning of the lesson (or practice and make progress in that specific thing).To summarize, and in very basic terms: a lesson plan is the teacher's guide for running a particular lesson, and it includes the goal (what the students are supposed to learn), how the goal will be reached (the method, procedure) and a way of measuring how well the goal was reached (test, worksheet, homework etc).The examples below show a fairly formalized handwritten lesson plan and a back-of-the-envelope lesson plan for the same lesson -- a 45-minute lesson on the Future Continuous. The first lesson plan indicates the time in minutes to be spent on each activity and whether the interaction is teacher-student, student only or student-student and materials to be prepared/used.The back-of-the-envelope lesson plan is clearly by someone who has done this lesson many times before and has simply scribbled a brief reminder of main aspects of the lesson.Both of these are examples only. There are many different ways of achieving the same objective. It is important to make lesson planning because it gives teachers a concrete directions of what he/she wants to take up for the classes.In a lesson plan, the objectives of the lessons are stated. These goals must be achieved at the end of the lesson. There are also teaching strategies stated as well as the procedure of the whole lesson. At the end, there is an evaluation to test whether the objectives are achieved. By putting these important elements together in a lesson plan, the teacher will find it easy to teach the lesson. He/She will be following the right road which in the end will surely guide students towards a better education.Lesson plans are just like movie scripts. It guides the director and other cast of what to do. In a class, the teacher is the director while the students are the cast members. The movie to become successful and award-winning must follow what’s written in the script. For a lesson to be worthwhile, lesson plans must also be followed.With a lesson plan, the teacher can save time and can manage his/her time efficiently. He/She doesn’t need to beat around the bush because the lessons are well organized. The lesson plans also allow the teacher to apply appropriate strategy. He/She can make use of varied resources and methods which will make the lesson more interesting and not monotonous.Lesson planning is also one way to enhance the expertise of teachers in employing successful strategies in the classroom. He/She will be more prepared and confident while teaching the lesson. Although lesson planning is considered as another requirement for teachers, still this activity also helps teachers to be better educators and managers of the classroom.Technically, there are four reasons for making lesson planning. The first one is to guide the teacher how to teach. While being clear about what topics to teach is important, knowing how to teach is the key to be success in the classroom. The same topic can be taught differently, depending on students skills, temperament and attitude.These considerations should influence a teacher’s planning of the tasks to be presented, resources needed and pacing of the lessons. Secondly, a good lesson planning makes a confident teacher.We need to constantly update ourselves with best practices that work, and how to teach more effectively. For example, a teacher who has only learned “how to” and not “why” when growing up will need to evaluate their own gap in knowledge when drawing out the lesson plans for the semester. This gives the teacher confidence when delivering the lesson in the classroom. A confident teacher inspires respect from students, which in turn reduces discipline problems.And further more,Lesson plans serve as a useful basis for future planning. They can be used again, in part or in whole, for future classes. Lesson planning for subsequent years can be drawn from and modified from current planning. The extra effort put in by first year teachers to plan and organize the entire year’s lesson plans and resources will go a long way for subsequent years teaching the same level.The last but not the least, A clear lesson plan can also be served as a central document for handing over to new teachers who are teaching the level for the first time. In addition, lesson plans, along with other materials, can also be used to support annual performance evaluation. Teachers applying for new job can also submit samples of their lesson plans to show their content understanding and organizational skills. However, there are always some controversial thoughts about making lesson planning. Some theorists and schools argue that creates more fixed "teacher-centered" classes instead of "student-centered" classes which are not pretty effective in the classroom. Basically,it is true too much planning can make lessons dull and less interested. And stop the teacher being flexible to the needs of the students. But there are some difficulties for inexperienced teachers to be able to as flexible as it would require. So most of teachers usually try to put themselves somewhere between two extremes. They make motes or have lesson planning forms done.And still leave some room and space in flexibility.