More food for thought!

More food for thought!

This time I’ll focus on lesson planning and how I feel about it.

To be honest, when I started working in Newlands I thought: “What a burden! I’ll have to plan every lesson step by step!! I was not used to doing it because I did not have to hand in any lesson planning at the school where I worked before. Despite the fact that I did plan my lessons in advance with my mate who taught the same year, I just wrote notes for each day in a copybook which belonged to me and which nobody else read. Despite the fact that I carefully thought about what I did and I reflected upon my teaching and the progress of my students, nowadays I feel that I am becoming a much more reflective teacher than I was before. Having to think about every step of a lesson in order to write it down and having other people read it makes me think even more about every detail, reflect upon the different alternatives I have and, most importantly, set a USEFUL GOAL for every activity or move planned. Having to think of the learning objective and having to give myself a sound reason for including or leaving something aside makes me say to myself: “Will my students learn from this?? Will they enjoy it? How can I improve this/ that???

Besides, I find that comments made on them can be really positive and can make me see things from another point of view, appreciate some aspects which I might have left aside or make some useful changes.

Many times when planning I think that I have to cater for too many things at the same time (phonics workbook, circles, activities, rehearsing, helping students who are behind, correcting copybooks and booklets + all the steps from an ordinary lesson) and that I have to make too many areas fit in a short period of time but, well, I always try to do my best in order to comply with them all, though sometimes, it’s a bit complicated and I have to leave things aside and establish priorities.