Teachers Making Lesson Decisions
Important Issues and Planning Decisions That Go into Lesson Planning
Teachers need to make a variety of planning decisions for ongoing lessons. Here is a list of tips and criteria for making the right decision for lesson planning.
"Teacher-learning contexts change and teachers' behavior must change accordingly. The basic problem for teachers is, therefore, to acknowledge that there is no one best way to behave, and then to learn to make decisions in such ways that their behaviors are continually appropriate to the dynamic, moment to moment complexity of the classroom" [Parker, 1984].
Once the school year gets started, many teachers are already absorbed by interactive decisions or, what is known as quick on the spot decisions based on the lesson plan for the day. This usually takes much of the teacher's time. Yet there are so many other kinds of decisions that go into planning that quickly become overlooked. Here's a refresher list for you to get started:
Planning Decisions for Lessons
1. Long term - plan in the summer for a whole course, year, semester
2. Short term - for a particular lesson.
Long Term Lesson Planning Decisions: Lesson Plans and Textbooks
What book to use?
- What supplementary material to add?
- If there is no book, what material should you teach? (4th grade, special education)
- How should you divide material between semesters?
- How to deal with extensive reading. A school should have an extensive reading library for example.
Short Term Decisions in Lesson Planning
- Aim or objective of the lesson: what will be the main teaching point of this lesson? Types of aims for the reading lesson typically include: a particular reading skill, a function, a grammatical structure.
- An opening
- Selection and ordering of activities: This is important in preventing teacher dominated discourse. Variation is the key word. Relate to the four skills, grouping styles, length of activities - short vs. long(er) activities, based on book, word cards, work pages, etc.
- Level of difficulty, how much each activity stirs them. It is a good idea to have an active/stirring activity sandwiched between two settling activities, topic of different ideas, mood (heavy and light and in-between moods such as humor and being serious) and finally, teaching presence - voice - acting ability.
- Closing: Leave enough (but not too much) time. Try to be aware of it. Try to avoid having to end a lesson after the bell rings.
- Summing up: some lessons need a summing up. For example: what did we do today? What can we call this lesson?
- The issue of giving homework.
- Linking lessons with previous and following lessons. Where are the students in the framework of things?
And finally, what do all these lesson plan decisions depend on?
- time of lesson (time of day, and day of week)
- age and level of pupils
- potential discipline problems
- when does the best learning take place?
- presentation - practice - testing sequence
- homework given previously and to be given
- cost effectiveness
Good decision planning takes a variety of teacher smarts and skills. Overplanning is natural in the beginning, too much of it after a while can demotivate your students.
