Lesson Planning and Classroom Activities/TVYL

A lesson plan is a teacher’s guide, where the teacher describes what he or she will do during the development of their class, the activities that they will do, and how long each one will last. This lesson plan must be done every day for the development of the class.

As future teachers, we should have knowledge and management of the lesson plan, because this will be the guide that will lead us to give learners a successful lesson, but for this we must take some points into account.

Establish clear objectives about the knowledge or skills the pupils should achieve by the end of the lesson. If we have reached them we can say that we have been successful. Also, it is necessary to create activities that stimulate in the learner the desire to participate, to show the skills learned during the course, in addition this is a way to evaluate the learning.

How do we encourage learners’ participation?

To encourage pupils’ participation we should develop the content in a creative and attractive way that catches the attention of students. The creation of classroom development activities is also a good tool to stimulate learner’s participation. If we make use of these, also we must establish them in the lesson, at the same time, with the time that we will need to carry out it and not to surpass time that is to explain the topic of the day.

The greetings of each day at the beginning of the class or the farewell, or sing a song at the half time of the class are activities that we can carry out. These are called routines, because it is something that the student recognizes and expects. Also, activities help us to keep the attention focused on ourselves and the main topic of the class.

Can we work with no lesson plan?

I suppose so, although we would have to improvise each activity in the moment, and the results cannot be satisfactory. Whatever, sometimes we will have to improvise some activities, but do this have some reasons. For example, sometimes children want to play or to sing, you probably do not have this activity in your lesson plan, ¿what should you do? You have to improvise a special activity.

When we are teaching young learners, we have to remember a young child needs to do different activities than an adolescent, they need do practice and do fun activities to achieve a real knowledge that they cannot forget easily.

If at any moment we see that children’s attention decrease, we can perform an activity called “ice breaker”. It is useful to animate the class and provide energy to the students.

So, is a lesson plan useful?

Of course. It is our guide, our effective tool to develop an academic content and achieve the goals that we established when we were created it.