Teach English in Brooks - TEFL Courses

As teachers we have a specific place we want to take our students and a limited amount of time to get them there. Writers use outlines, directors use storyboards, coaches use playbooks, and teachers have the lesson plan. It is a road map, a worst-case scenario guide, and a checklist of materials. It is how we see where we are going and how we are going to get there. We will look at what goes into a lesson plan, the advantages of planning, and the disadvantages of too rigid and too lax planning to explore what makes for effective lesson planning. Many may think that the majority, if not the entirety, of a lesson plan is the procedure. This is an important factor, the road map for the lesson. The procedure gives the lesson a goal and the steps to get there. But a lesson plan is not just a procedure, or list of activities. An effective lesson plan must include the context, where the falls in the larger plan for the course; the aims of the teacher, where the teacher pushes himself to grow as a teacher, to be taught while teaching. The lesson plan should include a clear and concise vision for information the students will walk away with. Having these clear goals will assist the teacher in evaluating the effectiveness of the lesson. Did the students absorb the lesson? To achieve these goals, teachers will all need to anticipate and plan for problems that could arise during the lesson. Since there are only so many minutes in a class, a teacher must account for how long each activity will take and include that timing in the lesson plan. This will guarantee time and space in the lesson for the critical information. Without timing, the engage phase could run too long and leave too little time for the students to apply the lesson in the activate phase. Confidence is not the only advantage of lesson planning, in fact is only the benefit of effective lesson planning. Writing lesson plans will help the teach focus on the goals, organize the steps to those goals, and anticipate technological malfunctions an behavioral problems. When the teacher foresees what could go wrong, they can avoid what is the true danger of teacher, panic. Without a plan for what could go wrong, a teacher is up river without a paddle when the projector doesn’t work, when the computer program crashes. Panic can even set in when the lesson is not coming across to the students. This can be avoided by taking the time to anticipate what could go wrong. The advantages of lesson planning are focus, back-up plans, and, as a result, confidence. An effective lesson plan is a balancing act. Neither can it be too rigid or too lax. A plan that is too rigid will not allow the teacher to adapt and tailor the lesson to the individual needs of the students. It will also give the lesson a robotic, impersonal feel, which the students will be able to sense, and this may affect the rapport the teacher wants to have with the students. A plan that is too lax will not only make the teacher appear to be unprepared, but will also make the students feel as if the teacher doesn’t care about what he or she is teacher. Again, that will affect the rapport with the students and cause more problems than the teacher is prepared to handle. If students don’t feel there is a focus for where they are headed, they will loss interest and have behavioral issues, act out. In conclusion, an effective lesson plan can take many forms. It can be a vision in the head of an experienced teacher or a step-by-step form used as a guide. It is a record of course so far and where it is going and what could be improved. Having a plan will instill confidence and allow the teacher to easily adapt, even if the problems that arise are the same as what they planned, they are still prepared for something to go wrong. An effective lesson plan is not a script; it is a guide to becoming the most effective teacher, one lesson at a time.