Once a teacher has a solid understanding of the methodology and philosophy involved in various kinds of Language Teaching approaches, he/she can begin to design lesson plans orientated at facilitating this process in the classroom.
While adaptability and spontaneity are essential personality traits in a teacher, without thoughtful lesson planning a teacher is basically teaching "at random" without a logical and pre-determined course to follow. Lessons conducted with poor (or no) effective planning will result in students struggling to conceptually understand the relevance and usefulness of the language they are learning. They may end up practicing language forms they do not instinctively understand, and without effective prompts to use it in a "productive" way, it is likely to go in one ear and out the other. Entrenched errors and a lack of "conceptual understanding" can develop easily as a result of this.
The amount of planning and thought a teacher puts into his/her lessons really depends on how much they want the class to achieve. Using pre-selected textbooks helps to select and organize language items, but a textbook can be limited when it comes to facilitating:
-> Recycling and Revision of Language
-> Combining Language Items
-> Combining Phonics/Pronunciation issues with Key Language
-> Identifying and Rectifying areas of particular difficulty for YOUR students
-> Identifying and Rectifying areas in need of Remedial work
-> Realistic Engaging/Presentation and Production/Activation of Language
English Raven Complete Lesson Planning and Reflective Teaching Journal
This is an upgraded version of the original English Raven lesson planning sheets, and has been formatted into a cohesive downloadable journal.
The new journal consists of 37 pages plus cover all in the single download, and includes the following features:
- Space for listing general class details
- A page for attaching a syllabus or schedule
- Individual student records and details for up to three classes or 45 students total (useful for multiple classes at the same level)
- Interlanguage Development notes for each student, to be taken down up to four times during the session or term
- Lesson plan sheet and reflective teaching notes are on a single page, allowing a daily entry, plus more room to include greater detail or lesson plan variations for different classes
- "In" and "out" boxes for homework tasks
- Miscellaneous notes at the back of the book
This resource is highly useful for the truly professional teacher, or teachers in training who need to be guided to plan and reflect well about their teaching.
