59 Вопрос

What should be included in a lesson plan?

Information to be included in a lesson plan can be considered under the following headings: Aims; Procedure; Approach(es) and activities; Materials, aids and equipment; Information about the students; Anticipated problems.

1 Aims

Questions you need to ask (and answer) are not only What do I, the teacher, aim to do? but also What do I expect the students to do and/or to have achieved by the end of the lesson? What specific language will they understand and use? or What specific skills will they have developed?

Example

To present and practise Why don't you „.? for giving advice. The students will understand that Why don't you + infinitive can be used to give advice to a friend. They will be able to use the structure with: go (home), take (an aspirin), etc. They will be able to give appropriate responses: OK, I will.

Often in a lesson you will have a main aim and perhaps a number of subsidiary aims. This is particularly true, for example, in a lesson in which skills are integrated (see Planning a skills lesson on p87) or when a listening or reading text is used to introduce a language item. It is important that you (and the students) recognize the main aim of the lesson and of each stage.

2 Procedure

This is the part of the lesson plan which lays out the steps - the stages - in the lesson to ensure that the aim(s) is achieved.

You should indicate on your plan what will be done at each stage and why (the stage aim), the approximate time, the materials you will use, and perhaps details of any complex instructions you are going to give or questions you plan to ask.

In order to do this you have to consider how you will order the stages and the

approach(es), activities, and materials you will use at each stage. You will have to

answer these questions:

How much time do I have?

Approximately how will I divide up the lesson into stages?

How much time will each stage take?

You also need to ask yourself: What will be the aim of each stage? How will the stages be linked?

Example

For the presentation and practice of Why don't you ...? a lesson of 35 minutes might be made up of the following stages:

Stage 1 (5 mins)

Introduce the structures. Context: giving advice to someone who has a headache, and the replies to the advice.

Stage 2 (5 mins)

Check students' understanding and practise saying the model sentences.

Stage 3 (lOmins)

Guided practice, using cue cards — in open then closed pairs.

Stage4(10mins)

Freer practice using a new context: giving advice about preparing for a test.

Stage 5 (5 mins)

Students make a record of the form and uses of the structure in their notebooks.

3 Approach(es) and activities

For each stage you will have to think what approach you are going to use and what activities the students will do to achieve your aims.

Questions to ask yourself may include:

If my aim is to present or revise a language item am 1 going to do it through a text, a

visual or oral context (perhaps a dialogue or pictures) or through a problem-solving

activity, etc?

For skills development what do my students need before they can listen, read, write or

speak? How will I follow up the skills work?

How will check that the students understand?

What type of practice activities shall I set up: speaking, pairwork, writing?

Have I planned for a balance and a variety of activities and materials - recognizing

that different activities make different demands on the students and arranging it so an

easy activity is followed by a more difficult one, a very active one with a quieter one, etc?

Are the activities ordered logically -from more controlled to freer?

For each stage what sort of feedback is appropriate?

The approaches and activities you decide upon should be indicated in the Procedure part of your lesson plan. Sometimes it is worth making a note of your intended seating arrangements as well. Throughout the plan, perhaps in the margin, you can include a note of the groupings and the interaction at each stage: teacher/students, student/student, mingle, etc.

4 Materials, aids and equipment

The question you need to ask is:

At each stage which materials, aids and equipment do I need to achieve my aitns? You should make a note on your lesson plan of when you will use these materials and aids and also include a plan of your blackboard or whiteboard at each stage of the lesson. (See Chapter 3 Section 1: The board.)

5 Information about the students and the classroom circumstances

It is worth noting at the top of every plan the level of the class, the coursebook they are using, the size of the class and its composition, especially if it is multinational. You may be required to give more detailed student profiles. You should also note how this lesson fits into the students' course programme (the timetable fit) and what knowledge you assume the students will bring to the lesson.

6 Anticipated problems

Although you need to learn to be flexible in class, to be able to think on your feet and adapt your lesson plan according to circumstances, you are less likely to be

Planning lessons

thrown if you give some thought to some of the things that can go wrong. It is a good idea to make a note on your plan of any anticipated problems - in terms of language or classroom management - that could occur during any of the activities and any strategies you have considered for dealing with these problems. It is particularly useful to include this on the plan you give to your supervisor. In this way you will be given credit for anticipating difficulties, whereas if you mention such problems after the lesson it sounds as if you are making excuses!

You can anticipate what students will find difficult in a particular language item by thoroughly researching the language you are planning to teach. (See Researching the language on pi 82.) Investigate, if possible, the ways in which their language is different from English. For example, will your students have difficulty with the sound /э/ because it doesn't exist in their language? This is obviously easier to do with a monolingual group. You can also anticipate difficulties by finding out as much as you can about what the students have done in previous classes - their individual strengths and weaknesses in skills work, for example.

There are a number of ways in which the timing and organization of your lesson can be affected. For example, it is a good idea to think about what you would do if:

• the students take a longer or shorter time to do the activities than you had planned;

• they find an activity easier or more difficult than you thought they would;

• some students finish before the others;

• there are some students who need extra support;

• there are uneven numbers for a pairwork activity;

• some or all of the students have already met the material you have based your lesson round: for example, they have already seen the video you were going to show.

Achieving a balance

It is important to be critical of your lesson plans - especially in checking your aims against your planned procedures. You should constantly ask yourself What is my aim, and will doing this in this way achieve my aim?

However, as in all things, you need to strike a realistic balance in the amount of preparation you do. If you overprepare this usually means getting stuck in your plan and not responding flexibly to the class; getting obsessed by your 'performance' - by your own ideas and techniques; or not being sensitive to the students, what they are doing and not doing. If you underprepare, this usually results in long silences while you decide what to do next (demoralizing for you and the students!), unclear aims and underexploited activities.

Also, remember that although you influence what happens in the class it is often more a case of 'managing learning¹ than teaching; it is the pace the students work at that needs to be measured, not the pace you work at. You can exhaust yourself with a dazzling array of new ideas you are determined to try out and then realize the students are doing hardly anything. In fact, with some well planned and well set-up activities you might need to do very little in the classroom.

Reasons for planning

Some teachers with experience seem to have an ability to think on their feet, and this allows them to believe that lesson planning is unnecessary. However, most teachers do not share this view and prepare their lessons. The resulting lesson plans range from the very formal and elaborate to a few hurried notes. But even the notes are still a plan of a kind.

For students, evidence of a plan shows that the teacher has devoted time to thinking about the class. It strongly suggests a level of professionalism and a commitment to the kind of research they might reasonably expect. Lack of a plan may suggest the opposite of these teacher attributes, even if such a perception is unjustified.

For teachers, a plan gives the lesson a framework, an overall shape. It is true that they may end up departing from it at some stage of the lesson, but at the very least it will be something to fall back on. Of course, good teachers are flexible and respond creatively to what happens in the classroom, but they also need to have thought ahead, to have a destination which they want their students to reach, and some idea of how they are going to get there. In the classroom, a plan helps to remind teachers what they intended to do - especially if they get distracted or momentarily forget what they had proposed.

There is one particular situation in which planning is especially important, and that is when a teacher is to be observed as part of an assessment or performance review. Such plans are likely to be more elaborate than usual, not just for the sake of the teacher being observed, but also so that the observer can have a clear idea of what the teacher intends in order to judge how well that intention is carried through.

60 вопрос

Correction techniques

When to correct written work

While the writing is being done or as soon as possible afterwards. You can correct at 10 times the rate that they can produce. It is counter-productive to correct fully. Indicate the mistake and re-create the situation. Spare them of embarrassment - public humiliation. Tactful: can you see what's wrong with this?

How much should you correct?

• Decide priorities.

• Choose a method of correction.

• Devise follow-up work for both the class and individuals.

Explain your marking system

• GR = grammar

• WO = word order

• Sp = spelling

• L = Incorrect choice of lexis

• ^ = Omission

• X = Addition

• E = Expression

Distinguish between three main categories of errors

1. Those which lead to misunderstanding or breakdown of communication - caused by:

   • translation

confusing grammatical patterns too long or complex sentences too short sentences

2. Lesser but often irritating errors -

   • wrong tense

   • non-agreement

   • word order

   • articles omitted or misused

   • spelling mistakes

   • punctuation

3. Stylistic errors - inappropriate style formal/informal, wrong register.