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.
