The Value of Lesson Planning

As both a teacher and a leader of teachers, I have always strongly endorsed the importance of a formal plan for every lesson. I was always surprised by just how much disagreement this opinion faced.

The more time I have spent in formal schools though, the more I see where this opposition comes from. At it’s core, the disagreement turns out to be one of definition rather than principle, I think, though even this occasionally takes a bit of persuasion.

Many of the teachers I work with are part of some formal, standardised system. Whether they’re teachers in government schools following the national curriculum or large private school with standards set at the group level.

These teachers are often required to produce incredibly lengthy plans for every lesson a whole year in advance. Some of these plans run to as long as a dozen pages per lesson. And if the length itself wasn’t bad enough, the longer these documents get, the less useful they actually tend to be.

Needless to say, when I endorse formal lesson planning, this is not what I am talking about.

I suggest that teachers plan their lessons formally not for administrative purposes but because I truly believe it leads to better lessons. Sadly, many of the standardised lesson plans I have seen when visiting schools do not benefit the value of the lesson at all, so it’s no surprise that the teachers feel jaded about the whole concept. Indeed, I have seen a good number of teachers download lesson plans from the internet to put in their portfolios to please the government auditors.

Below I will outline what I am talking about when I say that teachers should write their lesson plans formally, and at the end, I shall include a link to the format I use and I encourage teachers I work with to use.

Features of an Effective Lesson Plan

Timely

First of all, a lesson plan cannot be written a year in advance and expected to be effective. All that should be written at the beginning of the year is a syllabus, based on a curriculum and containing broad, overarching goals and core objectives.

An effective lesson plan should not only be preparation for what is coming but should also respond to what has happened previously. As such, teachers should not be required to write their lesson plans more than a week in advance of the lesson itself.

Specific

A good lesson plan will start from a clear and specific learning objective that states exactly what the teacher hopes to achieve by the end of the lesson. Only when there is a specific learning objective in place can we be truly certain that every activity contributes to this learning objective; conversely, without a strong learning objective, lessons can be aimless and lead to confusion.

A good learning objective (I have written in much more detail about this elsewhere) will cover knowledge, skill and application.

Complete

A good lesson plan should be complete in two domains: it should contain all of the important information about the class (the students) you are going to teach, and it should contain a complete run down of everything that you want to do in the lesson from the first minute to the last.

The Pre-plan should tell you everything that will help you plan the right lesson for your students. This will include things like the age of the students, their existing level of ability, the number of students in the class. It will also include factors such as the layout of the classroom itself, the duration of the lesson, the facilities available.

The Activity Plan will be a list of the activities you plan to conduct in order from start to finish. It will include the steps of each activity, the time allotted for each activity, the purpose for each activity, the groupings and learning dynamics for each activity.

Concise

A good lesson plan should contain everything you need to know to ensure your lesson will be effective, but it should not contain anything more. It important that I include this: it is not enough to say that the lesson plan should be complete and then assume that anything additional doesn’t matter. There are two reasons why you should actively avoid including any extraneous or unnecessary information.

First, extraneous information is a distraction. The 12-page lesson plan I was presented with recently was very carefully formatted and very tidy, but trying to find anything useful within it was like finding a needle in a haystack. A lesson plan needs to be something I can refer to quickly whilst teaching to keep myself on track and maintain focus and flow. This will not happen if my lesson plan needs a table of contents and a reader’s guide.

Secondly, asking teachers to include too much information on the lesson plan is exactly why teachers hate writing lesson plans. When a teacher looks at the format and finds herself asking too many times, “what is the point of this?” she will eventually determine that it is a waste of time and cease to take it seriously. It becomes just another obligation on a laundry list of admin. When the teacher can see that everything on the plan is valuable, then she is more likely to value it herself.

Reflective

This is slightly separate from the points above, but equally important. As well as planning for the lesson ahead, teachers should also make a habit out of evaluating the lessons they have taught. A good lesson plan will have space at the end to record the teacher’s reflections about what went well, what did not go so well, what might need to be addressed of followed up on and whatever else feels important as the bell rings.

Format 

Linked below is the file I use to plan my lessons, and this is the same file I share with the teachers I mentor. I don’t mandate that teachers use this file, but I do encourage them to think carefully about why they choose a different format; if they think it is more effective in some way than this, then they should go ahead and use it.

I say the same to you. If you are currently not using a standard lesson plan format, or if you are in the market for a new one, take a look at this. If you think you can improve it in some way, or if you find another format that you think is better for some reason, then you should go with that. But if you can’t think of a good reason not to use this format, then give it a go and see if it helps.

If you do have any improvements, I’ll be very happy to hear about them.

https://mailchi.mp/89b55a728f5c/lessonplan