Perhaps the most challenging unit for me was the unit about lesson planning. “….lesson planning is the process of taking everything we know about teaching and learning along with everything we know about the students in front of us, and putting it together to create a road map for what a class period will look like.” (Purgason, 2014. P. 362). Reading about lesson planning was definitely eye-opening for me, I never realized the amount of choices the teacher has to make to productively construct a teaching session!
Before, when planning a lesson, I was mostly focusing on the structure of the lesson, the objectives and activities. I have learned that there are way more things I need to consider during my lesson planning . What is the cultural and sociopolitical context of my classroom? How my lesson will cater for students with different needs? What are my students’ motivation and abilities? How can I stimulate student talk and minimize mine? If something goes wrong, will I have extra activities "in my pocket"?
Another a-ha moment for me was the goal setting activity. I have learned about terminal objectives and enabling objectives. Before, my objectives were quite “abstract” and hard to evaluate, like “the student will learn how to ask specific questions with what, where, when and why”. Today I would formulate it differently.
My terminal objectives would be
1. Students will be able to ask specific questions from a speaker
2. Student will be able to ask questions in a socially appropriate manner
My enabling objectives would be:
1. Students will be able to correctly form questions beginning with what, when, where and why.
2. Students will be able to use the intonation correctly when forming the wh-questions.
3. Students will be able to practise asking wh-questions in a a situational activity.
One of my main goals moving forward is to increase my awareness about my students’ needs, motivation and backgrounds and start incorporating that information into my lesson plans. This will make our lessons more fun and, more importantly, more meaningful.
Today I am more comfortable with the fact that it will always be a work in progress and that I don’t need to know it all. But I know that through my mistakes, I will grow and that means I will be able to help my students grow too.
While working on creating lesson plans, I have realized one thing about myself - I love teaching and really look forward to applying the new knowledge in my classroom (and with groups in the future!) and observing the difference it makes.
See some of my lesson plans here
References
Purgason, K. (2014). Lesson planning in second/foreign language teaching. In M. Celce-Murcia, D. Brinton, & M.A. Snow ( Eds.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (4thed., p.362)
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