Hi Everyone! It has been a long time to write a new post here.
I hope you guys are in very happy and good condition. Stay safe and work from home. :D
Anyway, I come up with a question. What do you do before entering your classroom -teaching-? Checking your outfit? make up? or your social media?
If you ask me, I did all of those things. :D
But, I believe those things are being checked after you finish your Lesson Plan. I believe that all of you are familiar with Lesson Planning. It is one of the hardest thing to do as a teacher (well, many teachers in my country say so)
Yes, Lesson Plan is an outline for what you will do in the classroom containing important information: student background (grade, students learning profile, number of the students). lesson (target language), the learning objectives, activities/instructions (steps to achieve the goals), and evaluation. Good lesson plan is when the goals, activities, and assessment are well connected to achieve the learner's outcome.
There are many reasons why teacher need to prepare such plan before teaching:
In other sources, stick to your lesson plan can give you big confidence to 'perform' in front of the students, especially for the pre-service teachers in their internship program. It is like a guidance to help you take control for the whole 45-90 minutes teaching.
There are many examples of lesson plan template. Here, one of my favorite templates which I ever used (simple but still in detailed).
In this lesson plan, we can see the sequences are:
1. Warm up (In this stage, teachers usually have a simple activity to access students' prior knowledge by reviewing last class material, or the students' experience in connecting to the today's material )
2. Presentation (Teachers give input (material))
3. Practice (Here, teachers give opportunity for the students to practice what they just have learned which is still in teachers' guidance)4. Production (In this stage, the students do their task in unrehearsed situations)
5. Evaluation (Here, the students can be assessed for their performance/learning, or both the teacher and students do self-reflection on teaching/learning)
In other more detailed lesson plan format, you can also add possible problems/difficulties and solutions beside every activity in your plan. It is really helpful to prepare ourselves to anticipate challenges while we are facing our students.
Okay, that was a brief explanation of lesson plan. My second question is, how do you make your lesson plan?
Do you start by formulating fun and enjoyable activities? or designing the assessment? If you do one of them, I will ask you to change it by reading the following suggestions.
Backward Lesson Plan Design.
Different from the traditional method where you design the lesson plan first, and then deciding the result (objectives), this design is the opposite. Steven Covey says that the second habit of highly effective people is that they begin with the end in mind. In other words, successful people start everything with a goal or a vision, which can be done by teachers in designing their lesson plan too. So, Backward design is when teachers start to formulate their lesson plan with the end -student' outcome/what the students need to learn or know-, then continuing to design the appropriate assessment, and finally planning the activities.
To put it more detailed, let's see each step to do this Backward LP design HERE.
