LESSON PLAN

Lesson planning is the art of combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that a lesson has an identity which students can recognise, work within, and react to – whatever metaphor teachers may use to visualise and create that identity. But plans – which help teachers identify aims and anticipate potential problems – are proposals for action rather than scripts to be followed slavishly, whether they are detailed documents or hastily scribbled notes.Harmer, J. (2001).Why lesson planning? It is not just because we are told to do so, nor something thought to make teachers suffer. Lesson planning helps us administrate, not only the time we have to teach a lesson, but also to combine different skills.When planning a lesson, we are able to think about the needs of the students, the approaches we may use and even the syllabus of the course. Either if we have to cover certain objectives or prepare students to sit an exam, by preparing the lesson in advance we can picture possible problems and think about some solutions.Writing down a lesson plan does not mean that we have to follow all the proposed steps, one after the other. It means that we are going to have a clear objective of what the students are going to obtain from a lesson and it gives us the certainty of what we can expect from both, students and activities.There are endless ways of writing a lesson plan; the most common are the ones we write, in a notebook or more formal, which are written in special formats, which sometimes are provided by the institution we work for. In both cases we are expected to write down the objectives we will achieve by the end of the lesson, activities, material, possible problems and solutions, models, and so on.Lesson planning is also a helping tool. By keeping a record of what we have done and what we are going to do, we can make sure that, if we are not able to be with our students, another teacher will be able to take over the lesson, almost with no problem.Finally, planning will probably take us some time the first times, but after a while it will become something almost natural. It will benefit you, as a professional, and your students, because they will get the best of you.