Lesson Plan
Introduction
A lesson plan is a teacher’s daily guide for what students need to learn, how it
will be taught, and how learning will be measured. Lesson plans help teachers to be
more effective in the classroom by providing a detailed outline to follow each class
period. This ensures every bit of class time is spent teaching new concepts and having
meaningful discussions and not figuring it out on the fly!
1. Significance of Planning Lessons
Planning is a very important element in the teaching-learning process. It is a
detailed description for a learning experience. It helps to decide the learning
objectives to achieve and realize the expectations of the curriculum. It is also
important because it helps the teacher in maintaining a standard teaching pattern and
does not let the class deviate from the topic. Pre-planning helps the teacher to be
better equipped in answering questions asked by the students during the lecture. An
effective lesson plan has three basic components; aims and objectives of the course,
teaching and learning activities and, assessments to check student understanding of
the topic.
2. Parts of a Lesson Plan
2.1. Lesson Objectives
Lesson objectives list what students will be able to do after completing the lesson.
These objectives tell the teacher if his/her lesson has effectively taught his/her
students new concepts and skills. Outlining objectives leads the teacher to answer the
following questions:
What is the topic of the lesson?
What do you want your students to learn?
What do you want them to understand?
What are the strategies to be applied?
If he/she ran sot of time, which ones could be omitted?
Thus, teachers will be able to manage time and accomplish the more important
learning objectives.
2.2. Lesson Materials
The list of materials that you need to teach the lesson and measure students’
outcomes prepares you to deliver your lessons every day. Without this list, you may
accidentally forget to print an important document or sign out the shared laptop cart!
The common types of lesson materials include: Student hand-outs, textbooks,
visual aids, grading rubrics, activity packets, computers /tablets. The list of materials
for each lesson depends on what you plan to teach, how you’ll teach it, and how
you’ll measure lesson objectives. Because of this, many teachers compile their list of
lesson materials in tandem with their lesson procedure!
2.3. Lesson Procedure
Your lesson procedure is an in-depth explanation of how the lesson will
progress in the classroom. The lesson procedure is essentially step-by-step
instructions that walk you through everything from the time students enter the
classroom until the bell rings at the end of the period. It’s smart to be very detailed in
this portion of your lesson plan. After all, there will be cases when another teacher or
substitute needs to fill in for you!
When writing your lesson procedure, you need to choose the type of activities
that will help students meet the lesson objectives. To do that, you can answer a list of
questions, including:
How will you introduce the topic?
What’s the best way to teach this information to your students?
How can you incorporate problem solving and critical thinking?
What real-life scenarios relate to this topic?
Does this topic lend itself to group work?
3. Stages of the lesson
Any lesson is divided into different stages of activities. Therefore, the teacher
should prepare the activities needed to be dealt with at each stage and through which
skill. The main stages of a lesson are commonly structured under a linear way known
as presentation, practice and produce. However, the teacher should build up activities
with short range objectives that go with each step.
Not all the lessons include the same stages. Reading and listening sessions are
divided into three phases: Pre (before), during, and post (after) reading/ listening. The
stages may overlap. A reading text, for example, may be part of the presentation or
might be a separate activity. Answering question about the text orally, gives learners
oral practice.
Conclusion
To conclude, it’s important to say that even teachers who develop highly
structured and detailed plans rarely strictly stick to them. The elements of your lesson
plan should be thought of as guiding principles to be applied as aids, but not
blueprints, to systematic instruction. Precise preparation must allow space for flexible
delivery. During actual classroom interaction, the teacher needs to make adaptations
and to add artistry to each lesson plan and classroom delivery.
