Lesson Planning, Second Edition

Series Editor’s Preface

The English Language Teacher Development (ELTD) series consists of a set of short resource books for English language teachers that are written in a jargon-free and accessible manner for all types of teachers of English, including experienced and novice teachers. The ELTD series is designed to offer teachers a theory-to-practice approach to English language teaching, and each book offers a wide variety of practical teaching approaches and methods for the topic at hand. Each book also offers opportunities for teachers to interact with the materials presented. The books can be used in preservice settings or in-service courses and by individuals looking for ways to refresh their practice.

Nikki Ashcraft’s book Lesson Planning explores different approaches to planning lessons and the various challenges this may present to a language teacher. In its second edition, this book provides an updated and comprehensive overview of lesson planning for the language classroom in an easy-to-follow guide that language teachers will find very practical for their own contexts. Topics covered include the importance of and approaches to lesson planning, and details on the practice of planning. In addition, this second edition includes updated references and sample lesson plans, as well as three new chapters, which discuss planning for online instruction, collaborative planning, and reflecting on your plan.

I am very grateful to the authors of the ELTD series for sharing their knowledge and expertise with other English language teaching professionals to make these short books affordable for all language teachers throughout the world. It is truly an honor for me to work again with each of these authors for the advancement of TESOL.

Thomas S. C. Farrell

CHAPTER

1

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 recall previous lessons, envision the learning we want to occur in the next lesson, and analyze how all the pieces of the learning experience should fit together to make that vision a classroom reality. In short, lesson planning is an opportunity for reflection-for-action (Farrell, 2020, p. 10) or thinking proactively about our teaching before it occurs.

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 those objectives, the sequence of those activities, the materials and technology needed, how long each activity might take, and how learners 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 will 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 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