Lesson Planning - Part 1 - Why do we plan lessons?
Hello. This presentation is going to cover this section on lesson planning and what we're going to do is to have a look as to why we go about planning a lesson, what do we actually put in it? We'll create an empty lesson plan pro-forma and then having done that what we'll do is to fill in that lesson plan for a particular teaching point. So, our starting position is going to be: "Why do we plan lessons at all?" There are a number of reasons why we need to plan a lesson. The first and foremost perhaps is that it's going to create a logical sequence for our lessons. If we didn't have a lesson plan, it is quite possible that we could go all over the place and it would become confusing for the students. By having this plan, what we've created is a structure that we can work from. So, in effect, the lesson plan itself is a working document and we can refer to it at various times in a lesson. If ever we're not quite sure what we're supposed to be doing next, we can just take a quick look at our plan and it tells us where we should be going. Another important reason for planning your lessons out is that it creates a record, a document of what has actually been taught and this can be very useful if wherever questions as to whether we've covered the syllabus in all its details, then we've got this lesson plan that shows that that has been done. The final reason, main reason, why we plan a lesson is that it can be used for someone to cover your lesson. For example, if you created your lesson plans for your next week and for some reason you can't get into work then somebody else could use your lesson plan to make sure that the students don't lose their sequence of lessons. So, these are some of the reasons why we plan a lesson. What do we actually put onto that plan? Basically, there are two areas that we need to cover on our lesson plan in order for somebody else to be able to take that plan and adequately cover our lesson. Firstly, we need to put some general information about the class that is being taught. So, how many people are going to be there and so on and so forth and secondly, what should happen during the actual lesson. So, what does our lesson plan actually look like? So let's have a go at creating a lesson planning document.
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