Monday, 13 June 2016

Buckland Weekly #19 - Questions to ask when planning your lesson

Way back when I used to work in an office environment as a computer analyst we often got sent on courses for things like time-management, personal development and such. Inevitably, especially in the time-management courses, the trainer would write SMART in capitals on the board and proceed to explain how all our targets needed to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Limited. (Occasionally some of the letters would stand for something else, depending on who was doing the training.) That was usually the tipping point for me, where I found myself doodling elaborate geometric patterns over my notebook instead of listening to yet another variation on flogging a dead horse. People do seem to like to apply simplistic notions to complicated situations.

All the same, you should think about some of the underlying concepts even if you don't need to bother yourself with trite acronyms to do it. It applies especially when you are planning a lesson. There are key questions you need to ask for each activity you plan.

The first, most obvious, and most easily overlooked is this.

Can it be done?

I once observed a lesson where the teacher was doing a reasonably standard activity. He had split the class (a small group of about twenty) into groups and written on the board “Animal, Food, Country, Colour, Job” and given each group a different letter. They had to find a word for each heading starting with that letter. One group had the letter “F”. I stood at the back with another observer trying to come up with colours starting with “F”. We managed “fawn”, “fuschia” and “firetruck red” but this was a beginners class who could hardly be expected to know the first two and the last one was just being silly.
The teacher hadn't really though through the question of whether the task could be done at all by that level of student.

The second question is one that everybody thinks about but that most inexperienced teachers get wrong.

How long will it take?

Estimating how long a task will take is not as easy as you might expect. It only comes with experience and it depends on various factors such as the level of the class, the size of the class, the physical layout of the classroom, the interests of the students, whether it's a familiar or unfamiliar type of task... among many others. One way to make an estimate is to give the task to someone else (say another teacher) and see how long it takes them, then add on extra time because your students won't be as proficient, add on more time for how long it will take to set up, add on more time for how long it will take to feedback and check. Occasionally (as discussed in an earlier post) teachers overestimate the time needed but most of the time they underestimate. If you haven't taught before you will certainly underestimate. A task you think should take five minutes might end up taking the whole 45 minute lesson if you aren't careful.

A large part of the problem is that teachers underestimate the answer to the next question.

How will I set it up and how long will it take?

Instructions MUST be given in language at a level lower than the task itself. You can't begin the task until the students understand what the task is. Digressing for a moment, I was once teaching in England and the students were doing an external exam. These were low level students. They had been in college for a year but were still beginners. There was a question on the paper that showed a map of part of a city and said “If you were standing on the bridge what would you be able to see?” A second conditional sentence was something that hadn't been covered yet in their lessons so the students struggled to work out what was required. *

Don't underestimate how long it will take to set up an activity. If possible demonstrate it rather than explaining it. If explanation is needed, plan in advance exactly what you will say and exactly what you will write on the board. Use the simplest language possible... then simplify it some more. Practice. You might feel silly speaking the instructions aloud in your empty apartment but it will pay off when you get to the classroom. Give your instructions to a colleague and see if they understand them.

Two other important questions go together.

What can go wrong?/What's my fallback position?

All sorts of things can go wrong even in the most meticulously planned lesson. Equipment failure; students don't understand the task; task is to complicated or too simple; students just not into it. You need to plan each activity keeping the potential problems in mind and think about what you will do about them if they occur. And you need to be prepared to improvise when something totally unexpected happens. I keep a few simple tasks in mind to substitute whenever something like this happens but occasionally something will happen that you just don't know how to deal with. In one lesson last year I found myself completely unable to teach because the noise from the nearby building site was so loud that I couldn't hear the students and they couldn't hear me or each other. In another just last week the day was hot so all the windows were open but the wind got up and all the windows started banging back and forward and the students wanted them open but I had to insist on closing them both for safety and to be able to continue the lesson. There is always something you didn't think of.

Finally there is the most important question of all and the one you should ask yourself as often as possible.

Why?

Whenever you put something on your lesson plan ask yourself why you are doing it. If the answer is “to use up ten minutes of the lesson” then take it off and think of something else. Everything in your lesson should be done for a reason. It might be checking existing knowledge, developing vocabulary, demonstrating a particular language point, practising social interactions or any one of a thousand things but it must HAVE a purpose. Activity for its own sake should be avoided.

Those are some of the questions you should ask yourself when planning your lesson. You don't need to worry about SMART targets but you do need to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. In the beginning you will get it wrong but the more you think about what you are doing, the easier it will become to actually do it.

In the next post I will look at the features that make an activity good (and by implication the ones that make it bad.)

* Not to mention the conceptual difficulty of the question. Would “people” be an acceptable answer. What about “the sky” or “my shoes”? The question wanted the names of other things identified on the map but that was in no way clear.


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