Dear colleagues,
Below you can find my answers to this activity.
Greetings,
Marta
1. Read the three teachers' quotes again. Whose planning style is most like your own – Deniz's, Paolo's, Erika's or none of these? Why?
My planning style is really similar to Deniz’s. I teach in a secondary school and, like her, I follow a means-ends approach to plan my lessons when I am with the big group. This happens twice a week. There is also an hour a week when I have just half of the group and we can practise listening and speaking. Then my planning style changes a bit. Then, that is more like Paolo’s style: I focus on their oral production from listening activities.
2. Which qualities do you think are most important in planning a unit of work? Give your reasons. Choose from this list, and add others if necessary:
variety
logic
relevance
balance
cohesion
flow
I think cohesion and logic are really important. Step-by-step outline, syllabus coherence and lesson cohesion are necessary for language acquisition. Relevant inputs are basic to motivate students and to engage them in their learning process. Balance and variety between language systems (knowing: grammar, phonology, lexis...) and language skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing) is from my point of view what can make a class successful or an utter failure.
3. When you plan a lesson, do you...
a. plan one lesson at a time, or a series of lessons?
b. start with the aims?
c. use the coursebook a lot?
d. plan in great detail?
e. start with a general idea of what will "fit"?
I normally plan a series of lessons. I like to view the term in perspective. I generally plan two weeks in advance (6 hours – 4 hours with the big group and 2 hours with half of the class).
Yes. I start with the aims and I use the coursebook a lot. I must say that the coursebook has loads of activities and I select the ones I find more interesting for my students. I never skip the activities that are communicative, though.
I plan …, but not in great detail. I use my scheme of work as a guideline, because l like variety, adding and removing activities, etc, or else I get bored.
No. I never start with this idea because I’ve known my students for four years and this is the second time that I use the coursebook.
4. What advice would you give a new teacher who says, "I spend hours and hours planning a scheme of work: I seem to go round and round, not getting anywhere"?
I would tell her to start reading the teacher’s guide that accompanies the coursebook and follow for some weeks what the creators of the materials have planned. This really worked for me when I started teaching 25 years ago. Then, she can be more creative and adapt the coursebook to her students.