LESSON PLAN

LESSON PLAN

A. Format Of A Lesson Plan

1. Goal

You should be able to identify an overall purpose or goal that you will attempt to accomplish by the end of the class period. This goal may quite generalize, but it serves as a unifying theme for you. Thus, in the sample lesson plan, “understanding-telephone conversations” generally identifies the lesson topic.

2. Objectives

It is very important to state explicitly what you want students to gain from the lesson. Explicit statements here help you to

a. Be sure that you indeed know what it is you want to accomplish,

b. Preserve the unity of your lesson,

c. Predetermine whether or not you are trying to accomplish too much, and

d. Evaluate students’ at the end of, or after the lesson.

Objectives are most clearly captured in terms of stating what students’ will do. Try to avoid vague, unverifiable statements like these:

•     Students will learn about the passive voice.

•         Students will practice some listening exercises.

•         Students will do the reading selection.

•     Students will discuss the homework assignment.

3. Materials and Equipment

It may seem a trivial matter to list materials needed, but good planning includes knowing what you need to take with you or to arrange to have in your classroom.

4. Procedures

At this point, lessons clearly have tremendous variation. But, as a very general set of guide lines for planning, you might think in terms of making sure your plan includes.

a. An opening statement or activity as a warm-up.

b. A set of activities and techniques in which you have considered appropriate proportions of time for:

• Whole-class work

• Small-group and pair work

• Teacher talk

• Student talk

5. Evaluation

Evaluation is an assessment, formal or informal, that you make after students have sufficient opportunities for learning, and without this component you have no means for (a) assessing the success of your students or (b) making adjustments in your lesson plan for the next day.

6. Extra-Class Work

Sometimes miss named “homework” (students don’t necessarily do extra-class work only at home), extra-class work, if it is warranted, needs to be planned carefully and communicated clearly to the students.

B. Guidelines for Lesson Planning

1. How to begin planning

In most normal circumstances, especially for a teacher without much experience, the first step of lesson planning will already have been performed for you: choosing what to teach. For teacher, scripting out a lesson plan helps you to be more specific in your planning and can often prevent classroom pitfalls where you get all tangled up in explaining something or students take you off on a tangent.

a. Introduction to activities

b. Directions for a task

c. Statements of rules or generalizations

d. Anticipated interchanges that could easily bog down or go astray

e. Oral testing techniques

f. Conclusions to activities and to the class hour

2. Variety, sequencing, pacing, and timing

As you are drafting step-by-step procedures, you need to look at how the lesson holds together as a whole. Four considerations come into play here:

a. Is there sufficient variety in techniques to keep the lesson lively and interesting?

b. Are your techniques or activities sequenced logically? Ideally, elements of a lesson will build progressively toward accomplishing the ultimate goals.

c. Is the lesson as a whole paced adequately? Pacing can mean a number of things. First, it means that activities are neither too long not too short. Second, you need to anticipate how well your various technique “flow” together. Third, good pacing also is a factor of how well you provide a transition from one activity to the next.

d. Is the lesson appropriately timed, considering the number of minute in the class hour? This is one of the most difficult aspects of lesson planning to control.

3. Gauging difficulty

Figuring out in advance how easy or difficult certain techniques will be is usually learned by experience. It takes a good deal of cognitive empathy to put yourself in your students’ shoes and anticipate their problem areas. Some difficulty is caused by tasks themselves: therefore, make your directions crystal clear by writing them out in advance. I have seen to many classes where teachers have not clearly planned exactly what task directions they will give. 

4. Individual differences

For the most part, a lesson plan will aim at the majority of students in class who compose the “average” ability range. But your lesson plan should also take into account the variation of ability in your students, especially those who are well below or well above the classroom norm.

5. Students talk and teacher talk

Give careful consideration in your lesson plan to the balance between students talk and teacher talk. Our natural inclination as teachers is to talk too much! As you plan your lesson, and as you perhaps script out some aspects of it, she to it that student have a chance to talk, to produce language, and even to initiate their own topics and ideas.

6. Adapting to an Established Curriculum

Because this book is aimed at teachers in training, specific information about curriculum development and revision is not included here. The assumption is that your primary task is not to write a new curriculum or to revise an existing one, but to follow an established curriculum and adapt to it in term of your particular group of students, their needs, and their goals, as well as your own philosophy of teaching.

7. Classroom lesson “Notes”

Most experienced teachers operate well with no more than one page of a lesson outline and notes. Some prefer to put lesson notes on a series of index cards for easy handling. By reducing your plans to such a physically manageable minimum, you will reduce the chances of getting hogged down in all the details that went into the planning phase, yet you will have enough in writing to provide order and clarity as you proceed.

C. Sample Lesson Plan

1. Goal

Students will increase their familiarity with conventions of telephone conversations.

2. Objectives

a. Terminal objectives

• Students will develop inner “expectancy rules” that enable them to predict and anticipate what someone else will say on the phone.

• Students will solicit and receive information by requesting it over the telephone.

b. Enabling objectives

• Students will comprehend a simple phone conversation (played on a tape recorder).

• In the conversation, students will identify who the participants are, what they are going to do, and when.

• Students will comprehend and produce necessary vocabulary for this topic.

• Students will comprehend cultural and linguistic background information regarding movies, theaters, and arranging to see a movie with someone. Etc

3. Materials and equipment

Tape recorder with taped conversation

A telephone (if possible) or a toy facsimile

Eight different movie advertisements

Movie guide page for extra-class work

4. Procedures

• Pre-listening

• Listening to the tape

• Whole-class discussion

• Schemata-building discussion

• Listening activity #1

• Post-listening activity

• Extra-classwork assignment

5. Evaluation

Terminal objectives (1) and enabling objectives (1) through (5) are evaluated as the activities unfold without a formal testing component. The culminating pair work activity is the evaluative component for terminal objective (2) and enabling objective (6). As pairs work together, T circulates to monitor students and to observe informally whether they have accomplished the terminal objective. The success of the extra-class assignment-enabling objective (7)-will be informally observed on the next day.

REFERENCES

H. Douglas Brown.(2007). Teaching by Principles An Interactive Approach to  Language Pedagogy (3rd Edition). New York: Pearson Longman.

Richardson, J. Lesson Study. Tools for Schools. Retrieved from www.nsdc.org/library/publications/tools/tools-04rich.cfm. Accessed on 27 November 2018.

Catherine Lewis. 2004. Does Lesson Study Have a Future in the United States?. Retrieved from http://www.sowi-online.de/journal/2004-1/lesson-lewis.htm. Accessed on 27 November 2018.

Mulyana, S. 2007. Lesson Study. Bandung. LPMP: Jawa Barat. Accessed on 27 November 2018.

Akihito, T & Makato, Y. (2004). Ideas for Establishing Lesson Study Communities. Teaching Children Mathematics. Accessed on 27 November 2018.