Buckland Weekly #31: Some Notes On Lesson Plans

It will be orientation time in two weeks and if the orientation group is anything like the previous ones there will be a mix of people with teaching experience and people without it. Those of you with experience will already know the value of having a good lesson plan, those without will find out quite quickly once you start the job.

Lesson planning will be covered in the orientation but it’s one of those areas where there isn’t enough time to do it as thoroughly as I’d like so I’d like to talk about it a little here. Rather than start with what a lesson plan is and how to write one I’d like to start by sharing something a colleague said to me when I was straight off my CELTA course and starting my first teaching job. Chris, my far more experienced colleague, observed me in my first week and then gave me a lot of really useful feedback about the lesson… and the lesson plan.

The most important thing he said to me was that the lesson plan isn’t written for the school or the inspectors or even the students. The lesson plan is your document. It’s written by you and for you. If there is something that you find it useful to include, include it. If there are things other people tell you to include but you don’t find useful, then leave them out. Feel free to scribble over it during lessons, to make any amendments that you want to and to stick to it or ignore it completely as you wish. It’s yours. Own it.

Now, when you do your orientation part of the process is to prepare and teach a demonstration lesson to a group of real Chinese students. Jennifer and I will be watching that and I will be giving you your feedback about it. For that particular lesson, whether you are already experienced or not, I will want to see a very detailed lesson plan – far more detailed than is actually necessary for your real teaching. I’ll also be suggesting that, if you aren’t already an experienced teacher you write lesson plans in that level of detail for a few weeks until you find the style that suits you best.

Here, then, are a few tips for writing plans.

1. Before you write anything at all spend some time thinking about the lesson. You will have a topic in mind. Think about what activities you can do with that topic. Think about how you will structure the lesson.

2. When you have your idea for how the lesson will go write yourself a rough bullet point plan. Include the various phases of the lesson and the types of activity but no detail.

3. For each activity in your lesson make notes on how you will explain it. What will you say? What will you write on the board? What will you demonstrate?

4. When you’ve done all of that you can make your proper lesson plan. You can fill in the detail. Plan your activities, write down on the plan exactly how the activity should be organized. Write down on the plan anything that you MUST tell the students so that you don’t forget it in the lesson. Write down on the plan ALL the instructions you intend to write on the board so that you don’t make mistakes or miss things out.

5. Include on the plan a contingency for what to do if the students don’t understand the instructions. Also include a stand-alone extension activity in case the students finish all the work more quickly than anticipated.

6. When the plan is finished leave it sit for a couple of hours then take another look at it. Can you see any areas where there might be problems? Do you think the timings are right for a forty minute lesson? Change anything you are concerned about.

7. (This one is important.) Look at each activity independently and ask yourself one simple question – “Why am I doing this?” If the answer for any activity is “to use up time in the lesson” throw that activity away and substitute something with a genuine learning aim.

8. Make two copies and file one. Use the other one in class. For the one you use remember that it’s a working document. You can change it around as you see fit. The other one, in spite of what I said earlier, IS for the school. They don’t usually ask to see them but just in case it’s wise to keep something that you can hand them if they ask. It doesn’t really matter if you made changes on the fly – just give them a copy as it was originally planned and everything will be fine.

One final thing. If you go to lesson plans section of this blog you will see a lot of my lesson plans. They probably aren’t as detailed as you will want to use at first because I’ve been teaching for a long time and have developed my own particular style. You will develop your own style quickly enough. As for the plans on the blog you should feel free to take them, use them, amend them… do what you will with them. It’s what they are there for. Just try not to use them in the demonstration lesson because that’s where I want to see your ideas not mine.