1. Whose planning style is most like your own - Deniz's, Paolo's, Erika's or none of these? (See exercise 1.) Why?
I feel closer to the way Deniz plans her classes. Like her, I think to stablish some routines is very important, especially with children and teenagers. They need to know what is coming and what you expect from them. Like Deniz, I also think that the lesson and the activities you plan must have logic so that the students know where you are getting them and what is the aim of their work.
2. Which qualities do you think are most important in planning a unit of work?
When we teach a group of students with a clear and common target, let's say a group of doctors or a group of travel agents, relevance of the topic will be the first factor to take into account.
Logic and cohesion are very important to help students develop their own learning skills through the sense of predicting what is next, to understand what and why the are learning and to reassure them in their learning styles.
Balance has to be always in our minds. We have to be sure that we plan activities to develop all our students' skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing and, at the same time, these activities have to be varied. It is variety, besides logic, what gives the "flow" to our class.
3. When you plan a lesson, do you...
I always start my lesson plans by defining the aims of what I want my students to learn. Then I go to the contents that the coursebook presents, and, in general, I try to use them since my students already have the book. I design the order in which I want to work these contents and choose the activities I think would better help my students to learn. The activities can be from the book, from other printed materials or invented by myself. I usually plan a general scheme of the unit which I try to follow, but I never plan in detail, because a lot of times, depending on how your students are progressing, you have to introduce changes in your lessons.
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 think the first thing to do is to think about what is the aim you want to teach. After that, to think which are, in your personal opinion, the best stages to achieve your target and design varied activities for each skill you want to work on. Try to be consistant in this scheme of work and evaluate how it works for your students. Little by little you will feel more confident.