PLANNING LESSONS
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 A4
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 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).
While planning a lesson, a teacher should think about each of the following categories:
1. Goals: Think about (1) broad objectives of the course, (2) goals of the particular
lesson, (3) what students should be able to achieve after the lesson.
2. Objectives within the lesson: Define what your students will do to acquire
further knowledge and skills and how they will be able to demonstrate that they
have learned.
3. Prerequisites
4. Materials: What will be needed, e.g. what is available (make a list/bibliography)
and what will have to be prepared.
5. Lesson Description: Describe the general focus of the lesson and include
thoughts to share with other teachers. May include learning level.
6. Lesson Procedure
Introduction: Describe how you introduce ideas and objectives, get
student's attention and motivation, etc.
Main activity: Define the sequence of activities, in particular pedagogic
methods like presentation, demonstration, explanation, discussion.
Closure/conclusion: Describe how you plan to draw ideas together and to
provide feedback to students.
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