Lesson planning has always been my toughest task as a teacher. I do understand how important is a lesson plan, for this reason, it's frustrating not being able to be effective creating one effectively. I want to have engaging classes in my classroom, I want to make sure I know what I am doing and for what reason I'm doing an activity. I usually create an activity thinking on the topic, but I don't have clear what my students should achieve with the class activity.
In Matthew's class was suggested that a good strategy to develop a good lesson plan is starting backward, so if I start knowing how I will evaluate the students, and how I intend to achieve that learning, I can have an objective according to what I want to achieve, and I have to take into account that the objective must be measurable. so the action they are going to make must be measured with some tool either an oral test, a workshop or something that allows me to know if the objective was achieved by the majority of the group.
What am I doing wrong? Starting with the objective and not been careful enough to make sure to measure and achieve my objective. How frequent should I plan? Everyday for every lesson I have to give, but this it seems hard for me I feel like I will spend the rest of my life planning.
What can I do to improve? I believe this will take some time and practice. I have to get used to write my lesson plan, as simple as possible but very SMART, hahaha OMG, easier said than done, but I understand is a tool that I really need to have any chance of being a successful teacher. If I don't do it I will continue having a high percentage of students that haven't acquired the desired knowledge.
You're right, we can take this too far and get overwhelmed thinking about every single lesson in such detail. So what is the goal of this lesson planning focus?
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate goal is that the process becomes natural. That is, you automatically start to think in terms of what you want Ss to be able to do and develop your ideas from there. Think of it like this. Let's say you have 5 days to do simple present (affirmative statements). Perhaps the objectives for each could be something like these:
1. SWBAT note the two forms of simple present tense verbs.
2. SWBAT match the correct form of the verb to the correct nouns/pronouns.
3. SWBAT write 5 simple present tense sentences using 5 different verbs given a pronoun-to-verb agreement table.
4. SWBAT to write 5 simple present sentences independently and identify errors (if they exist) in a partner's sentences.
5. SWBAT express their own and other Ss' routine activities orally while in groups of two, three and four.
Are those perfect objectives to teach this grammar? Perhaps not, but now I have a clear plan with regards to how I need to focus for each day's instruction and I can plan teaching and activities accordingly.
Does that help?