Category: Topics

Don’t let a lesson plan stifle magical moments
Has this ever happened to you? You discover some new thing and suddenly you notice it everywhere. This happened with the first car I bought in university: a 1964, baby blue VW beetle. It was 400 dollars and had a homemade wooden floor. The funny thing about this, though, was that having bought a VW beetle, I suddenly began to notice other VW Beetles. They were, in fact, everywhere. This very same phenomenon is happening in my classroom with what I have coined, SLOW moments.

Slow down
These Spontaneous Learning Opportunity Windows (SLOW) are serendipitous moments when everyone is suddenly focused on exactly the same thing. It may be triggered by a student’s comment, a joke, a mistaken answer, something from the textbook, or something I just said. At that moment, everyone’s brain has stopped and a small window has opened. If you are ready, it is very easy at that moment to slide something through the window and into the student’s brain. It actually gets easier and easier the more you keep an eye open for these SLOW moments.

Classroom interaction
The SLOW strategy can improve your teaching by exploiting classroom interaction during a class. Since these interactive decisions must be made on the spot, this technique takes some practice (Google Allright; Bailey; Wajnyrb; Tsui; or Nunan and classroom interaction for lots more).

To get started, there are three things necessary to become adept at exploiting a SLOW moment: 1) confidence, 2) awareness of the syllabus and 3) the ability to riff like a jazz musician. If you don’t believe in yourself when you go off-script, you risk the students also not believing you. Secondly, you need to know the syllabus so you can make sure that everyone succeeds in being able to do what you ask them to do, using meaningful language that isn’t too far away from what you’re doing or have done in the past. Finally, riffing simply means improvising with some underlying intention. So, here are some examples of a few things that led to SLOW moments:

Whining
Yuki complains that she’s hungry (Onaka heta). Yuki is always hungry, every week, like clockwork. So, I call out, “Yuki is hungry again. Yuki, this morning I had a big breakfast. I had 2 pieces of toast – one with peanut butter and one with honey. What did you have? Nothing? Really? Everyone – Why do you think Yuki didn’t have any breakfast? (Elicit ideas and give feedback) OK, let’s give Yuki some good ideas to help her fix her life. Yuki, I think you should _____. Anyone else? What should Yuki do?

Reporting
Chikako reports, “I went *to shopping and *studying English last night.” I call out in a cheesy quiz show host voice, “Double chance!” and suddenly we are all in the same moment. “Can anyone find two small mistakes?” Then, “Can anyone else give me a two-verb sentence about last night?” Can anyone ask Chikako if she bought anything cool?

Worrying
Miki asks, “What’s on the test?” I call out, “Miki sure loves tests! Miki, what do you think is on the test? If you were Steven, what would you put on the test? Everyone, ask your partner, “What do you think TERRIBLE Steven will put on the test?” Ready… Go. (Time passes…) OK, let’s review what could be on the test.”

Killing time
Hiromi suggests, “Let’s play a game today.” I call out, “Hiromi is the queen of “killing time” What does it mean in Japanese? Yes, exactly, jikan wo tsubusu. In this class, who else is good at killing time? Which teachers are weak against these killing time queens?” “Everyone, ask your partner, how do you sometimes kill time?”

Writing
Yuri writes, “I take… *on the train to school every day” while I’m walking around the room during a writing assignment. When I see this mistake, I call out (knowing that this student will laugh rather than being embarrassed) “Wow, Yuri, you are a very macho girl. Everyone, do you know how macho Yuri is? Every morning, she takes on* the train (I gesture putting on a train like a backpack). There are two or three good ways to say this. Anyone? Yes, “take the train”, “catch the train”, “get the train”… great.

Hidden bonuses
This technique is actually full of hidden bonuses: it builds extra rapport with students, it teaches students to learn from other students, it promotes consciousness-raising, and it encourages active participation. The more you invest time into observing what is ACTUALLY happening in your classroom, the better your lessons will be.

Prepare for the Unexpected

Detailed lesson plan? Who needs it? Well, maybe we all do. Having a detailed lesson plan can really help you not only own your lesson, but also own your classroom. The first thing you have to realize, though, is that it’s all about outlook and outcome. When you have everything planned down to the finest details, you can be sure that the outcome can at least be something you’ve expected.

Birthday party, grocery shopping, holiday trip or wedding day: we all have prepared something in our life, right? Planning is something that comes naturally in our life. Planning your lesson involves using some of those same skills —  except that with a classroom lesson, your goal is to make sure the lesson is learned well by your students.

When planning a birthday party, you not only make sure there’s enough food for all, but also that the food is something everyone will enjoy: Not too spicy, not too oily, delicious and easy to digest during the fun busy moments. Got it? Now, apply this same idea to your classroom. Make sure your lesson is prepared well enough to feed everyone in class so that they all come out full of knowledge and eager to come back for more. To achieve that you’ll need some serious planning, not only carefully but also completely as you have to prepare for the unexpected. Acquiring this skill takes thinking and practice to own, and it won’t happen overnight, but it is a skill that will help define you as a teacher.

When my lesson has been laid down to the very details, it means not only have I taken a giant step toward owning the content I’m teaching and the methods I’m using (an important thing for me) but also that I can feel secure when I open the classroom door. I have brought my umbrella should things go wrong – and they will go wrong.

I teach kindergarten, so things can go way beyond unpredictable and right out of control sometimes because kids come in with a variety of swinging sleepy cranky moods. This is why I always make sure I have some topic-related fun back-up activities planned in case I need to get learners back on track.

Speaking of which, one time I planned a picnic on the playground to teach my class about adjectives. Of course it rained all day. Detailed planning allowed me to be able to switch the activity with some twists here and there to get my lesson done indoors without panic. This was my umbrella.

To plan your own classes down to the tiny details, here are some questions worth lingering on:

Topic of the lesson:

• What do you  want students to learn?
• How do you want them to understand?
• What questions might pop out along the way?

Concept to be applied:

• What are the skills I want my students to grasp?
• What do I need them to understand more and first when I can’t get them to get all?
• What do I want them to take away when the class is over?

Back up plans:

• When I’m running out of time which ones could not be omitted and which one I could skip?
• What activity to prepare should my plan not go well?

All in all, it all comes down to what you have in your bag. If you keep these things in mind, prepare adequately, and come in with the positive outlook, then things will be fine. With the right planning, you’ll know what kind of fun you can expect.

When you have your umbrella you can surely dance in the rain! Have fun planning everybody!

How important is detailed lesson planning?

Because you’re probably expecting me to answer the question in the negative, and because I love surprising people, I’ll answer it like this:

VERY important – if you’re a new teacher, faced with all the unpredictability, spontaneity and simultaneity of the classroom zoo. It’s HELL in there, and your lesson plan is like a magic charm that will protect you from being eaten alive. Your very detailed lesson plan allows you to navigate a safe path through the jungle. BUT, however detailed, however carefully thought out, it’s not foolproof. There will come a point – very early on in your career, probably – when, as the Scots poet, Robbie Burns put it: “the best laid plans of mice and men/ gang aft agley”. That is to say: stuff happens! So you need to learn to adapt your plan, maybe even abandon it.  It’s not even a case of having a plan B. Or C. Or D. There comes a point when you just have to think on your feet.

VERY important – if you’re participating in some kind of training program, and especially if you’re going to be observed. A detailed lesson plan is a must – and it’s also very revealing evidence as to the quality of your pre-lesson decision-making. You can tell a lot about a teacher by looking at their lesson plan. How realistic are the objectives? How logical is the staging? How varied are the activities? How plausible is the timing? And so on. But, again, just because you have planned it like that, doesn’t mean it will go like that. Just as chess-players can’t predict their opponent’s first move, you can never be sure how your class will respond to your plan on the day. A skilled observer will be looking at how you monitor the effectiveness of your plan ‘in flight’ – and how you modify it, where appropriate.

NOT so important – if you have a coursebook and accompanying teacher’s guide that does it all for you. But even the best coursebooks were never written specifically for your particular class on that particular day, so you will need to select, adapt and supplement – maybe a little, maybe quite a lot. besides, an over-reliance on the coursebook will result in lessons of a certain sameness and even blandness.

NOT so important – when you’ve been teaching for a while and have developed a fluent set of classroom management skills and activity routines. I’ve always maintained that when you start teaching it’s 90% planning and 10% management. But for an experienced teacher, it’s 10% planning and 90% management. Like cooking, you start off following the cookbooks faithfully, until you start acquiring some reliable cooking skills and intuitions, and you can start to improvise successfully.

NOT so important – in fact impossible, when you’re asked to substitute for another teacher, or to take over a class at short notice. I had to do this a lot as a fairly new teacher in a school in Egypt, and I learned very quickly how to manufacture a lesson out of very little – a single visual aid, or a short dictated text. These skills were invaluable, not only because I learned how to be resourceful and to get maximum benefits out of minimal materials,  but also because I discovered how much the learners can contribute to the content and flow of the lesson – if you trust them.

COMPLETELY unimportant – if, having developed a set of effective management skills and teaching routines, having experienced what it’s like to think on your feet, having learned how to be resourceful with very little, and above all, having learned to trust your learners, you are ready to fly on your own – and without a detailed flight plan. It’s then that you’ll experience the (almost) unbearable lightness of teaching.

I used to think of lesson plans as road maps. They gave me the general idea of where I was headed, but there were still plenty of opportunities for interesting detours along the way. I’ve noticed that very few people actually use paper maps anymore, so perhaps a car navigator is now a better analogy for lesson planning. I can’t imagine traveling without my navigator, nor can I imagine teaching without a lesson plan.

Know where you’re going before you start your trip

The very first thing you need to do before beginning to drive is tell the navigator where you’re going. In the same way, you should know your final destination before you begin a class. Where do you want students to be at the end of class? What goals do you have for them? How do the objectives for this class fit into your big picture? Where do you want them to be at the end of the school year? Lesson plans are a bit like traveling backwards. You start at the final destination, and then work backwards to see what steps will get you there. You certainly don’t want to fill in the details for lessons further in the future—that would eliminate all the fun side trips and make you feel trapped by your plan—but you do need to know where you’re headed.

Detailed steps vs. a general route

When I first started teaching, my lesson plans were very detailed. For a one hour class, I would spend at least two hours planning. Lesson plans looked a bit like this:

When I was a new teacher, it really helped to have a detailed plan because it made me visualize each class before I taught it. I imagined the flow from one activity to the next, made sure there was a balance of skills and types of activities, and anticipated places where we might detour from the lesson. Knowing what came next helped me avoid “dead” zones in class.

These days, a lesson plan for the same partial lesson looks more like this:

1. Review family vocabulary—matching game

2. Introduce he/she

I’m not ignoring all of the steps from my early lesson plans. I’ve simply internalized them. I’ve become so familiar with the various routes for this particular destination that I don’t actually need a navigator any longer.

The journey or the destination

When you travel, sometimes getting to your destination is the most important consideration. Sometimes the interests of the other people in your car are most important, and you stop to see sights that they’re interested in. There are even times when the ultimate destination is almost incidental to the trip itself.

With teaching, it often depends on the reason your students are in class. If you are teaching a class preparing for the TOEIC, I guarantee that the destination matters. If you are teaching senior citizens who are more interested in keeping their brains active, quite likely they’ll be game for wherever your lesson takes them. If you are teaching children, parents will trust you with the side trips as long as they feel their children are making progress. However, in all cases, students (or parents) are probably paying for your time so they will want to know that you are headed somewhere.

From plan to record

For me, the ultimate value of lesson planning is the record it provides of where my class has been, what we did along the way, and what they enjoyed (and didn’t enjoy). That’s the main reason I won’t be giving up my lesson plan notebooks anytime soon. They give me a place to reflect on lessons—what worked and what didn’t—and to note what we actually did in class (as opposed to what I had planned to do). I also take notes about what’s happening in my students’ lives so that I can include content in future lessons that will resonate with them, record observations about language that is a challenge and progress they’ve made.

How important is lesson planning? Click on any of the author thumbnails to see their post:

Barbara Sakamoto	Scott Thornbury	Yitzha Sarwono
Cecilia Lemos	Anna Loseva	Steven Herder