Lesson Planning Adventures
A wise man (well an older teacher) once told me that the time spent on planning an English lesson should never be longer than the length of the actual lesson.
Maybe so, but in your first introductions to lesson planning on the Trinity CertTESOL course you can certainly expect to be spending quite a bit longer on your lesson planning.
A lesson plan detailing each stage of your class may run to quite a few pages. Where every part of the lesson has an objective, with exotic terminology such as 'activating current schemata' or giving controlled practice of target language'!!
Why so much time needs to be spent on preparing just one lesson is a major reason the Trinity CertTESOL course so effectively prepares you, the trainee teacher, for your time in the classroom. With help from dedicated trainers and invaluable support from other trainees, the running order of a lesson is slowly put into place.
Different starting points are considered; for example a set of words, a conversation topic, a grammar point, a reading exercise. Then potential challenges the students may have during the class are considered, with solutions offered. Acronyms such as ICQs and CCQs are used and reused so often that they will become as familiar to you as CNN or BBC.
All this time and effort ensures that you never go into the classroom unprepared. With your lesson plan to hand, you will develop the confidence needed to explain, instruct and involve your students in an active learning environment. The joy of seeing them actually using the English you planned is rewarding, spurring you on for the next lesson, when the process must begin all over again.
Of course, once the course is over and you've begun work as a qualified Trinity CertTESOL teacher, your lesson planning will become much shorter, both in time taken and paper used! But the experience you will have gained during your training on how to develop a lesson will continue to guide you for many years to come.
