Why is planning important?

A good lesson must be planned.

Even when the experienced teachers do not write out and seems to
“improvise” a lesson, that lesson has been carefully thought off.
The excellent lesson happening through spontaneous decision-making
does not exist.
Lesson planning is a key teaching skill because:
It is one of the key traits of being a professional teacher. Students expect
their teachers to be prepared.

It helps you maximize the impact of your teaching approaches and
materials. When you plan, you consider: your students, your space, the
materials and the time available. Planning gives you the opportunity to
tailor your lessons to the needs of your students and of your teaching
reality.
It helps in your professional development. When you sit down to plan a
lesson you engage with theory and practice by carefully thinking about
what you are going to teach, and how you are going to teach it and
reflect on the impact that your teaching may have on your students´
learning.

It helps you avoid trouble. When you plan , you generally anticípate
potential problems as well as ponder on potential solutions to those
problems.
A well – planned lesson is also important for students.
Planning is important for students because
 It shows them that the teacher cares for their learning.
 It conveys respect for their time and effort
 It makes learning easier as a well- strucutred lesson is easy to follow
and understand
 It provides students a model of well-organized work that they can
imitate.
Throughout history of teaching, there have been various models for planning lessons and
each has had its merits and limitations.
Also, each form of planning has contributed some elements to the improvement of teaching.
Madeline Hunter’s 7 step lesson plan template
In 1984, educator Madeline Hunter proposed 7 steps that every lesson should take into
consideration
1) Review: review of the previous class or of relevant concepts that students have already
encountered and which will useful in today’s lesson
2) Anticipatory set: moment in which the teacher gets the class ready by providing a
motivating activity to hook the learners into the topic, as well as to activate specific areas
of the students’ background knowledge.
3) Objective: the teacher clearly communicate to students what the objectives for the lesson are. Objectives
state what is expected of learners as a consequence of having participated in the lesson. They also
highlight the relevance that the contents of the lesson will have for the students’ learning in general.
4) Input and modelling: the teacher provides input on the topic of the lesson. This can be done through
modelling, demonstrating or telling. Modelling shows students what is expected of them in terms of
performance by the end of the lesson.
5) Checking understanding: the teacher introduces activities aimed and making sure that students have
understood the input.
6) Guided practice: once understanding has been ascertained, students engage in a sequence of controlled
activities during which they will manipulate the contents of the lesson in order to master them.
7) Independent practice: the teacher engeges learners in activities that make evident whether or not they
can use the new knowledge independently.
These steps depict a direct teaching sequence, one which is very much based on a
transmission model.
The goal of this kind of lesson organization is for students to master the content,
i.e. show they can apply what the teacher has taught them to academic tasks
successfully.
Hunter’s model has interesting element: by focusing on reviewing prior teaching at
the start of the lesson, teachers can make sure that students become aware of the
flow of the course.
Additionally, starting from where the students are ( through the anticipatory set as
well as anticipating the objectives) is a move that puts the students at the centre of
the learning process.
Gagné’s “9 events of instruction”
Gagne, Briggs and Wager ( 1992) provide a re-elaboration of Hunter’s model. Their
framework include nine steps
1) Gain student’s attention
2) Inform learners of the objectives of the lesson
3) Stimulate recall of prior learning
4) Present a stimulus
5) Provide “learning guidance” (through presentation, demonstration or modelling)
6) Elicit performance (practice)
7) Provide feedback
8) Assess performance
9) Enhance retention and transfer
Although this framework contain many items in common with Hunter’s the end goal
is not mastery, but retention and transfer.
In this model learners are engaged from the beginning by some sort of motivating
activity, they are informed of the objectives of the lesson, so that they gain a sense of
direction, and their background knowledge is activated before presenting the new
concepts.
Although this framework contain many items in common with Hunter’s the end goal
is not mastery, but retention and transfer.
Stages in planning
This more contemporary model is the one that many language teachers engage in when
planning their lessons.
 Stage one: specification of the learning objectives and designation of specific, observable
evidences that these objectives have been achieved.
This includes considering students’ needs, the curriculum, learners’ ability and the time
designated for the lesson.
It also means beginning the planning process by looking at the end first and asking: what
will the students actually be able to do as a result of my teaching? What will students take
away from today’s lesson?
Also, we must ask ourselves: how will we know that the objectives have been attained?
This focus on what our learners should actually be able to do at the end of the lesson.
Build lessons in a backwards fashion, starting from the students’ actual potential and
building our teaching from there.
 Stage two: anticipation of how the lesson objectives will play out during the actual
lesson.
Consider the difficulty that the lesson objectives will present to students as well as what
the teacher will need to do in order to help students meet the challenges.
Plan scaffolds (temporary support that we give students so that they move along the
learning process)
 Stage three: selection and ordering of activities and tasks aimed at achieving
the lesson objectives.
Consider how much practice will be necessary to reinforce new language,
what the logical order of tasks should be, what pattern of interaction would
favour the students development the most and how much time will be necessary
for each activity.
 Stage four: second phase of anticipation.
The focus is on the actual execution of the lesson including which instructional
tools will be used (e.g.. How we will use the whiteboard or the blackboard), how we
will promote smooth transitions from one activity to the next, the type and quality of
questions we will ask, and how we will bring a lesson to a close.

For this process to be successful we will need an awareness of our

students’ needs and capacities, as well as an awareness of our own
teaching repertoire, the materials and the lesson objectives.
Qualities of a good lesson plan:
Any plan needs to get students from one point of learning or awareness to another.
This involves synthesizing a particular piece or pieces of information and creating a
map that steers the students and teachers to the desired pre-specific destination: the
learning objectives.
Three key words are often used to describe effective plans: clear, erudite and
logical.
Clear: students and teachers need to have a clear understanding of
both the lesson objectives and the rationale for the procedure plan.
Students need to engage in the lesson at a metacognitive level and
understand how each activity or task aids in achieving the lesson
objectives and how these lesson objectives contribute to their goal of
becoming proficient in a second or foreign language.
Erudite: simplicity may be easier for the teacher and student.
An important consideration when planning is knowing how both you
and your students are going to navigate all the activities and tasks you
want to do and teach.

Logical: procedural plans that are constructed with stages that build on one
another progressively and logically usually ensure that learners can follow
the lesson as the lesson itself progresses.
The antithesis of this is a lesson plan that jumps with Little logic from one
activity to another and as a consequence loses the students in the process.
We need to be ready for MAGIC MOMENTS (when students do or say
something really interesting) and be prepared to change our plan to take
advantage of them.
We also need to be ready for UNFORESEEN PROBLEMS (when
something happens which we hadn’t anticipated) and be prepared to
change our plan to deal with them
What are lessons like?
• We need to have an idea of what we hope the students will achieve in a lesson. We
need to think of the best ways to help them do this. When we start to think what the
AIMS of a lesson are and how we will help the students to achieve those aims, we are
already planning, whether we write the plan down or not.
• Lesson plans are like maps. They tell us where we are going and help us to take the
best route to get there. But we still have to make decisions as we travel. Should we take
a detour? Do we prefer the motorway or a country road, for example?
• Lesson ideas can come from many different places. They can be inspired by
films we see or something we read. They can come from the ideas of our
colleagues or from something we have read about in a teachers' magazine or
heard from an online community.
They can come from the SYLLABUS we are following or the COURSEBOOK
we are using - or they can simply arise because we think our students need some
extra work on something.
They may be part of a SEQUENCE OF LESSONS, perhaps planned around a
central TOPIC or THEME.
What goes into a plan?
There are different plan forms and formats. But they all have several things in common:
• The most important part of the planning process is to decide what our precise learning
aims are. In other words, we need to consider the learning OUTCOMES. We can think of
a learning outcome as the answer to the question What will my students know or be able
to do at the end of a lesson (or lesson stage) that they could not do or didn't know at the
beginning?
• We need to consider TIMETABLE FIT. In other words, we will say what the students
have been learning recently and what they will be doing in the next lesson(s) after this
one.
We need to have (or write) a good CLASS DESCRIPTION. This needs to say who the
students are in as much detail as we can give. We can say what they find easy and
difficult, how well they participate in lessons, etc. When we know who our students
are, we can plan especially for them - and plan activities that DIFFERENTIATE
between different students.
• We need to list the LANGUAGE EXPONENTS (GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY or
PRONUNCIATION items) that we are going to teach or the LANGUAGE SKILLS
(reading, writing, speaking and listening) we will focus on.
• We will say what ACTIVITIES we are going to include in our lesson and what
TEACHING AIDS we need to achieve them.
• We will describe the PROCEDURES that will happen in our lesson and what
INTERACTIONS will be taking place - in other words, who is working with whom.
For example, perhaps the teacher is talking to the whole class. Or perhaps the students
are working in PAIRS or GROUPS.
• It helps to estimate the TIMING of each lesson stage. If we include this in our plan,
when we are teaching we will know if we can slow down or if we need to speed up.
• It helps to ANTICIPATE PROBLEMS that our students might have with the lesson
we are preparing. If we do this, we can then imagine POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS to
these problems.
• We will list ADDITIONAL POSSIBILITIES so that if the class goes more quickly
than we anticipated (or in a different direction), we have something ready.