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Is lesson planning important? Well, there are varying opinions on the issue, and some more experienced teachers prefer to jot down notes rather that create lesson plans as they feel they are rigid and stifle creativity and flexibility. However, most can at least agree that the writing of lesson plans has a number of important functions and is a vital part of ESL instruction serving as an aid, a working document and a record. It is an aid to planning, because by writing down what you expect students to achieve by the end of the lesson, and how you plan to achieve it, it helps you think logically through the stages in relation to time. It serves as a working document giving you something to refer to during the lesson to keep you on target, and it also provides a written record of what was covered in class and what material s were used. There are no set rules on how a lesson plan should be written down or formatted but there are some basic tenants that instructors can follow. For example, lessons should be kept simple and instructors should not try to script them, although they should have structure. The teacher should write the anticipated time for the each activity in the lesson in the margin and check for balance of skills. Instructors should also keep in mind keeping their lessons flexible and open to adaptation, although this is often easier for more experienced teachers. When planning a lesson there are several things that should be included. The learner objectives; or what you hope the students will be able to do by the end of the lesson. The personal aims or what the teacher hopes to achieve and teaching aids that will help keep the class engaged in the lesson. Other key factors included: anticipated problems, class level and timing. As teachers we are continually striving to improve our skills and make our classes as educational, enjoyable and entertaining as possible. Self-evaluation is an effective way of doing so, and one way for teachers to evaluate their own lessons is by making notes on one’s lesson plans of what went well and where the lesson could have been improved. By focusing on each lesson’s strengths and weaknesses teachers can help themselves to develop. Moreover, a good teacher will always want to monitor the quality of their own lessons. Planning a sequence of lessons, which is much like planning a single lesson, is another aspect of lesson planning, and when doing so there are a number of special issues to consider. One such issue has to do with the flexibility to make changes during the lesson, which can obviously throw off our sequence of lessons. Therefore, to remain flexible one must continually maintain and update lesson plans. An experienced teacher will also build goals into a sequence of lesson plans to give students motivation and something to aim for. Lesson content also needs to be reviewed over the course of a sequence of lessons to make sure certain information is being retained by the students. Finally, variety and balance must remain important to ensure all skills are being included and given equal treatment. So while it’s arguable, at least for the experienced teacher that lesson plans are not a good idea because they create a fixed and teacher centered classes, it’s true that an inexperienced teacher most certainly needs to adopt the skill of creating effective lesson plans. To be able to generate the type of flexibility effective teaching requires, as well as the aforementioned aid to planning, serving as a working document and as a record of what a class has done and what materials have been used.
