3 Crucial Factors to Use a Lesson Plan in Your TEFL Teaching
Lesson plans are a guiding document created by teachers for a specific learning objective for a target group of learners. Lesson plans are essential to every teacher, whether you teach young learners just starting or adult students business language. Lesson plans are necessary because they are a guided plan, visual and written documentation to work from, and a historical record.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jennifer C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
1. Needs Analysis
Lesson plans are guided plans created for your specific students. It starts with a learning objective. What do you wish your students to learn by the end of the lesson? Once a goal is set, you can build your address from that point. This will allow you to take a look and focus on how you wish the lesson to go to achieve your designated target. The breakdown of this is called the procedure. Starting the class with an engage phase and ending the study with an activate phase and all the different teaching phases in-between will be planned out with a designated time. A lesson plan will allow you to focus on the anticipated problems for both you as a teacher and the students who are learning the objective. This will help you prepare a solution to the issue before it arises. You can also, as a teacher, set your aims and what you wish to accomplish in the lesson. This can be anything like using a particular teaching method successfully. This guide will also let you look at the materials needed for the study and plan out activities. If you know you will need post-it notes or markers, that can be listed in the lesson plan, so you as a teacher have a visual reference to the materials you need for class. This will allow you to be prepared before class starts.
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2. Flexibility
Lesson plans are constantly changing and being altered even during a lesson. This is why they are a working document. You already planned out your procedures when you created the lesson plan, but as stated above, this is a guide. You have to learn to be flexible when teaching a lesson. This can change based on student participation and involvement. Keep in mind; it is not about making sure you get through everything in the time you set on your lesson plan. It is about making sure the students successfully learn the learning objective outlined in the lesson plan. If a particular activity takes longer than expected or students are engaged in asking questions, this is an acceptable adjustment to your working lesson plan. This is not to say you should never stick to your lesson plan—the thesis says that it can be adjusted.
Planned activities can permanently be moved to the next lesson if the time allotted does not allow all things in the lesson plan to be met. It also serves as a visual cue to teachers to ensure that they are staying on task and not straying too far away from the learning objective. It is easy to get off duty in a classroom. Having a lesson plan in front of you can keep you focused on the task at hand and help you move smoothly from one phase to the next.
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3. Record for Future Reflections
Lastly, lesson plans are a historical record. It can be a detailed record of what has been covered in the class and what activities and materials have been used. It can also serve as a guide for a substitute teacher if, for some reason, you cannot be in the classroom for a day. This is why a lesson plan should be simple, clear, and concise. All a substitute teacher should have to be given is the materials needed to teach the class and the lesson plan.
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Lesson planning is necessary for every teacher. It is a helpful guide to make sure you know your learning objective, what materials you are using to teach that learning objective, and problems. It gives teachers a visual representation of what they should be teaching to stay on task and is a historical record of what has been introduced in the class. This is why lesson plans are essential in all teaching situations.
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