Teach English in Lintingkou Zhen - Tianjin

Lesson PlanningImagine standing up to give a speech in front of a room full of curious people, with no speech cards, no timed practice runs and you?re not quite sure of what you want them to know when they walk out of the room. Now you can begin to see the difficulty in teaching a class full of non-native english speakers without a lesson plan. Lesson planning in both the native and non-native english classrooms alike is absolutely crucial in supporting a teacher and their classroom throughout the learning journey. A good lesson plan and its advantages well and truly outweigh the few disadvantages they pose, and when used to their potential make an ESL teacher?s job far more manageable. First we must understand that lesson planning operates in addition to many other essentials such as the syllabus, classroom management and student evaluation. A good lesson plan alone will not produce the necessary learning automatically but will help the teacher to achieve it. Some of the obvious features of lesson planning that will not require specific detail are its benefits as a record of past lessons and allowing a teacher to pinpoint precisely when a language point or topic has been taught. In a teachers? absence a thorough lesson plan will provide the replacement teacher with a document explaining exactly what the students need to learn and how. Its value as a working document to refer to throughout lessons, not only enhances teacher confidence but can assist with time management. However, if we look deeper into lesson planning, the significance lies in their wider context and how they can help ensure that a teacher has covered all the necessary syllabus components. Think of the school syllabus as a big puzzle, with each lesson representing just one piece of that puzzle and together the lessons should work together to make up the entire puzzle. Without a comprehensive lesson plan a teacher may not know exactly where that lesson fits into the syllabus. Consequently, lesson planning serves to that exact purpose, enabling a teacher to specifically pinpoint the learning outcome of the syllabus that the lesson will aim to achieve and detail precisely how to get there. Although lesson planning is advantageous in many respects some teachers may argue that they may inhibit the creative potential of a lesson. In this regard a teacher will need to be flexible in order to ensure that a lesson plan does not restrict the students, and at their discretion to either continue an activity if it seems to be working well as opposed to moving the lesson along simply because the lesson plan had intended to. Classroom dynamics can be unpredictable as can the success or lack thereof of activities undertaken within them, therefore lesson planning is intended as a guide that will benefit the classroom not to impede it. Lesson planning encompasses more than just structure and requires thought on the resources and materials that will be used to assist the lesson. The resources and materials that will be necessary throughout a lesson need to be planned and organized taking into consideration the language level of the students, what value the resource will contain and whether it will engage the students. In constructing a lesson plan a teacher formulates the creative flow of the lesson with a learning outcome in mind, and can decide on suitable resources to achieve this learning outcome. As important as the lesson planning itself is an evaluation of its effectiveness. A teacher should always be willing to look objectively at their work and analyze the various components of the lesson, what worked and what did not and how could it be improved for future lessons. It is essential that a teacher reviews their completed lessons to discern whether it achieved its learning outcome, and what areas if any will require more attention in future lessons. Lesson planning has its supporters and its critics alike, but for all teachers it has its benefits, none more so than those who are inexperienced in the field. For a good lesson to occur preparation is the key, and lesson planning provides a foundation for teachers to work with in developing effective and specific lessons that align with the given syllabus.