Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in New Mexico? Are you interested in teaching English in Jemez Springs, New Mexico? Check out our opportunities in Jemez Springs, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
This unit focuses on the importance of planning lessons as well as how to do so. The functions of lesson planning are as follows: 1) to create an aid to planning (stating objectives/expected achievements of students and how you as a teacher will make it possible). 2) to be a working document. This means that is should be something that is easily rearranged or flexible in order to adapt to the students' needs. 3) to serve as a record for which topics have been taught to the class, the types of activities done, the objectives achieved as well as any complications or gaps of understanding that may have surfaced.
One of the basic principles of lesson planning is keeping it simple. The more complicated a lesson plan, the less chance a teacher will have in successfully carrying it out and helping students achieve their objectives. Another is to not try to script the lesson to the point that you know everything you're going to say at every point of the class period. This creates too much rigidity and does not allow the teacher to adapt to students' needs as they arise. The third is to aid a teacher in structuring a class and maintaining it. It is helpful to include the anticipated time for each portion of the lesson, which makes for good time management. Another is to help the teacher see that there is a balance of skills being developed/utilized and that the lesson flows. Lastly, a good lesson plan has built in flexibility to, as I mentioned above, to allow for changes to meet students' needs.
Lessons plans vary for a number of reasons – teacher experience, complexity of material/topic at hand, size of class – and fall somewhere on a spectrum from highly planned out to loosely planned out. More experienced teachers may just jot a few notes down on a piece of paper that they will bring with them to class. However, less experienced teachers may bring a fully-fleshed out lesson plan to ensure they don't forget anything and to assist them ensuring the students achieve their objectives. The following bits of information are particularly helpful to a teacher who is new to the profession: learner objectives, personal aims (for the teacher), language point, teaching aids/materials, anticipated problems and solutions, procedure (activities to help students achieve objectives), phase (ESA), timing (for each segment of the plan, interaction (teacher-student or student-student), class level, number of students, date/time, teacher's name and observer. While a lesson plan that includes all of the information above may be a useful record in helping a teacher look back on what has been taught and achieved, it is also helpful should a substitute teacher need to step in a teach a class or two.
