Lesson Planning, First Edition

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The Importance of Planning

Lesson planning is at the heart of being an effective teacher. It is a creative process that allows us to synthesize our understanding of second language acquisition and language teaching pedagogy with our knowledge of our learners, the curriculum, and the teaching context. It is a time when we envision the learning we want to occur and analyze how all the pieces of the learning experience should fit together to make that vision a classroom reality.

There are a number of benefits to writing a lesson plan. First, lesson planning produces more unified lessons (Jensen, 2001). It gives teachers the opportunity to think deliberately about their choice of lesson objectives, the types of activities that will meet these objectives, the sequence of those activities, the materials needed, how long each activity might take, and how students should be grouped. Teachers can reflect on the links between one activity and the next, the relationship between the current lesson and any past or future lessons, and the correlation between learning activities and assessment practices. Because the teacher has considered these connections and can now make the connections explicit to learners, the lesson will be more meaningful to them.

The lesson planning process allows teachers to evaluate their own knowledge with regards to the content to be taught (Reed & Michaud, 2010). If a teacher has to teach, for example, a complex grammatical structure and is not sure of the rules, the teacher would become aware of this during lesson planning and can take steps to acquire the necessary information. Similarly, if a teacher is not sure how to pronounce a new vocabulary word, this can be remedied during the lesson planning process. The opportunity that lesson planning presents to evaluate one’s own knowledge is particularly advantageous for teachers of English for specific purposes, because these teachers have to be not only language experts, but also familiar with different disciplines like business, engineering, or law—fields that use language in specialized ways.

A teacher with a plan, then, is a more confident teacher (Jensen, 2001). The teacher is clear on what needs to be done, how, and when. The lesson will tend to flow more smoothly because all the information has been gathered and the details have been decided upon beforehand. The teacher will not waste class time flipping through the textbook, thinking of what to do next, or running to make photocopies. The teacher’s confidence will inspire more respect from the learners, thereby reducing discipline problems and helping the learners to feel more relaxed and open to learning.

Some teachers feel that lesson planning takes too much time. Yet lesson plans can be used again, in whole or in part, in other lessons months or years in the future (Jensen, 2001). Many teachers keep files of previous lessons they have taught, which they then draw on to facilitate planning for their current classes. In other words, lesson planning now can save time later.

Lesson plans can be useful for other people as well (Jensen, 2001). Substitute teachers face the challenge of teaching another teacher’s class and appreciate receiving a detailed lesson plan to follow. Knowing that the substitute is following the plan also gives the regular classroom teacher confidence that the