More about the perfect lesson planning

Lesson planning is a significant element of the teaching-learning system. It helps teachers to create a logical sequence of stages and activities to achieve the learning objectives, think over better timing for activities,  reflect on the lesson and so on. A lot of teachers wonder how to create an effective lesson plan, what stages it should include, how to set clear lesson goals, the list goes on.  

Skyteach invited Mihaela Dascalu to conduct a webinar «The Perfect Lesson Plan«. Mihaela shared her knowledge on the best strategies of lesson planning and main components of a lesson plan, talked about the difference between lesson aims and learning outcomes, writing clear and measurable learning outcomes. Below you’ll find the answers to the questions the speaker didn’t have time to respond during the webinar. 

Do you think a 25min lesson can be productive? We spend 5 min for administrative issues, 5 min for warm up, results of the lesson — 5 min. So only10 min for main activity.

I assume that a 25-minute lesson is for very young learners, whose attention span is very limited. I confess I have never taught such a short lesson. Maybe I have wrongly assumed that the most common classroom time is 50 minutes minimum.

For the main activity, 10 minutes can be enough, depending on what you want to do, but a lesson cannot be made of one activity. There should be a number of two or three activities that build up into the main/productive activity, which, if not finished in class, can be taken home as homework. But again, it depends.

For a 25-minute lesson, the admin stuff should be kept to a minimum or ignored if possible (just notice and do it right before class or after class). The warm up could be just questions ‘How are you today?’ and go into a lead in activity to introduce the students to the new topic. For very young learners a vocabulary building activity and a game with that vocabulary as the main ‘production’ activity seems enough.

When is the best time to create a lesson plan: while creating a term plan or just before the lesson?

Although I do know that the policies of some schools require that the teachers present their lesson plans for a month in advance at least, this seems a non-sense to me. You can prepare your lessons a week in advance or the day before the lesson. If you are an experienced teacher and saved some lessons that worked well before, you just need to modify the plan to fit your new group of students (the class profile will help you make these adjustments).

In a term, you do know how many classes you have. After you have studied the curriculum objectives and the syllabus for that class, you need to create a framework of work. So now that you have the whole course objectives and the number of class hours, you need to allocate one class for ‘getting to know your students’, for diagnostic testing to find out the language needs of your students (this will go in the class profile), mid-course testing/assessment if necessary, and final class or classes for exams, and the rest goes to class teaching the material.

You plan just the topics and the aims. You can even sketch a plan for each, but not detailed lesson plans, because you do not know what is going to happen in the reality of the class. Leave the writing of full lesson plans till you are closer to the lessons themselves but at least you have a framework to work from.

How can I understand that the plan was a success from student’s feedback?

It is NOT the plan that is successful but the lesson you taught guided by that plan. Good indicators might include the smiles the students give you at the end of the class, the fact that some may want to chat with you about the lesson at the end, that they may leave the classroom chatting in English, or by formally giving them a check-out card two minutes before the bell rings where they have to write one activity they enjoyed, and one activity that was not useful. Naturally, these will be anonymous and you will collect them from each student leaving the classroom.

Is it better to have a lesson plan every lesson printed or in my mind?

It can be printed, handwritten as a full plan or in the form of notes with each activity and its timing but most importantly, write the learning objectives of that lesson not to lose sight of what you want your students to learn in that lesson. Yes, the students might achieve them all or not, but these are the red flags that drive your lesson and will help you reflect on your lesson after it is done.

Should I prepare a lesson plan (like you introduced in the webinar) every lesson?

If you are a beginner teacher, I would strongly recommend that you write full lesson plans even though they take time. This full lesson plan is a deep-thinking process, but it is well worth it. After you get used to it, you do not need to write as much because you will get accustomed to this flow of thinking about your lessons. The teacher’s aim and the learning objectives will still have to be written down…and even on the board for your students so that they too can see where you are going and the reasons behind the activities you are doing with them.

Should we check homework before warm-up?

If you gave them homework, yes. 

How much time do we have to check the previous homework?

It all depends on the type of homework that you have given them. The time for checking homework is up to you. Do not spend a lot of time doing it. If it is a written piece, just collect and correct them after class or and during class if your students are engaged in independent activities that do not require your immediate control (naturally, still keep an eye on them).  

Is it possible (and wise) to set up homework at the beginning of a lesson?

I have never tried myself and I cannot imagine it done this way. I think if you do this, some students might think only of it and will try to start doing it during your class to avoid working at home, and this can be very disruptive.

What do you do if the time allotted for the speaking activity (e.g. discussion) has run out, but the students haven’t finished the activity and feel like speaking on?

This is a classroom management issue. That is why we need to limit the students’ time for doing an activity. This time limit has to be set when you give them the instructions. Just allow a reasonable and realistic amount of time for a speaking activity (in groups or pairs). The students need to know how long they have, and you can even ask them again when you check instructions: ‘How much time do you have?’ Tell them that they will not be granted extra time. This will keep them focused and on track. You just need to be quite strict. Well, if something really interesting comes up, then allow them a little more time to finish if you have that time.

How to measure your time on activities, especially with big groups?

This comes with experience and knowledge of your group of students. Try setting one time limit for a type of activity and if it works well you can allow the same amount of time again when you have the same type of activity. It is just trial-and-error based on your knowledge of the group. After a few attempts, you will time your activities better.

Which part of the lesson planning can be the most time-consuming?

Good question. For me, it is the writing of the SMART learning objectives because it takes a lot of thinking based on knowledge of the group, the aims of the lesson taken from the official curriculum, the teaching aids I have available, and the amount of time I have.

I forgot to mention this during the webinar: the learning objectives should be S.M.A.R.T., i.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable (in the time-frame we have at our disposal), Relevant, and Time-bound.

Choosing the right activities leading to the final productive/creative activity could be time-consuming for a novice teacher. The coursebooks are usually helpful because you have everything there unless you decide that some coursebook activities are boring, not that useful to achieve one learning objective or another, or not quite relevant for your students, in which case you need to look for something else and this may take some time.

How long does it take you to write a lesson plan like this (like presented in the webinar)?

It takes me between an hour or two if I build a lesson from scratch, i.e. when I do not follow a coursebook. I repeat, it takes some time in the beginning when you are not used to it but when you get familiar with the thinking processes behind it, it does not take more than half an hour. I am not counting here the time to do photocopies or write your own task-sheets or handouts.

If a student has some questions not connected with this particular aim of the lesson ( maybe he doesn’t understand something and it can make problems in the future) is it possible to answer them to make it clear and then go back to the plan?

It depends on the question. If you can answer quickly only to that student, yes, of course, go back to your plan. In case there are more students who have the same question and they need extended explanations that are really important because, otherwise, you will not be able to continue your lesson, then stop everything, explain/clarify/elicit from other students and try to move on. Sometimes, these situations can become LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES, and these you cannot plan. They just happen so do not ignore them. Leave the plan aside and deal with what the students need at that moment. (You need to use your knowledge of the group and your intuition to see if that is a genuine learning need and not a ‘trap’ set by your students to throw you off track.)

May the teacher use communicative games for reflection?

The reflections that I was talking about in the webinar is the teacher’s post-lesson self-reflection to see what went well, what did not and why, and how they can improve his/her teaching by choosing new personal aims.

If you want, you can have your students reflect on their own learning at the end of the lesson and this reflection can be done as a communicative pair or group activity. The teacher could use the results of this kind of activity for his/her own post-lesson reflections in combination with self-reflection on the lesson.

To do this, the students have to be trained and to be quite responsible and serious, even though it can be quite fun. Training the students to be reflective learners can be a topic for another webinar. This topic is quite helpful, given the fact that we live in such a fast-paced world that teaching the students to be independent and responsible learners with developed critical thinking skills has become a necessity.

How to check if you have succeeded with your plan?

We check if the lesson was successful or to what extent it was successful. Yes, it was based on a plan. Have the students achieved the learning objectives? If you wrote them on the board at the beginning of your lesson and, with your students, ticked them one by one as done, you can say…and the students can say that the lesson was successful.

Now, let’s say you have achieved them all. Look back to your lesson plan and ask yourself: have I used all the activities planned? Have I used the time effectively for each activity? What has deterred me from doing one of the activities that I planned? I did not get to do it, but was it important? Did it stop the flow of learning? …..and the like. If you managed to do all the carefully planned activities, achieved the learning objectives, you feel good inside and the students left your class satisfied, then your lesson was great and the plan worked.

Is it possible for a lesson to be effective without getting feedback from your students?

At the end of each activity, we need to organize feedback. The purpose is for the students to check if what they did was correct, to correct themselves, to know if they did well or partly well, to have a feeling that that activity is done and another one is following. Without this feedback at the end of each activity, I do not think the lesson would be so effective as a whole.

If you refer to getting feedback from the students at the end of the lesson so that you can have some idea of how this lesson was perceived by the students, then this is only optional. If you need the students’ assessment of your own lesson, then do it, but carefully. Not all the students are honest.

As for you giving general feedback to your students at the end of the lesson, this needs to be done. It is part of closing a lesson on a positive note, stressing the positive and telling the students what they need to be more careful next time. Appreciate their effort and dedication during the lesson. It helps build rapport.but only if they deserve praise. Never give praise when it is not deserved, just give encouragement.

What is better … PPP or TTT?

There is no comparison between them. They have different purposes and they are used with students of different ages, levels, and language needs. Also, there are other ways/approaches/methods of sequencing lessons. What about the Task-based approach? What about teaching listening or reading skills? These do not fall under PPP or TTT. We use more eclectic approaches and it all depends on who, why, what we teach. As teachers, we need to know different ways of staging the lessons, use them as prescribed or combine them. Do not feel conscripted by one model or another or by fashions. Let’s use our critical thinking skills, the knowledge about our students in front of us, the knowledge of the subject we are teaching, and keep an open mind to everything that is ‘sold’ to us. Notice the students, react to their needs, be human, plan your lessons carefully with your students in mind, visualize yourself teaching them, and be yourself, real, genuine. Do not think that you have to be someone you are not.

What should I plan to make sure to increase STT if there is a group of students?

This is a question for a workshop on classroom management or how to teach speaking.

Plan for pair work, and group work, but the main principle is to do anything you can as a teacher to increase students’ confidence when speaking English, mainly the shy ones: teach vocabulary and do lots of vocabulary activities and games, strengthen their grammar, encourage them, and so on. This topic is quite large and it needs a workshop dedicated to it.

If you have any further questions regarding lesson planning, feel free to ask on our forum.