Lesson plans: skeletons and retrospective planning

Lesson Planning is familiar to all teachers as an essential part of our jobs. It helps us organise our classes and shows our directors that we are prepared and know what we are doing. Detailed plans help break down our lessons visually into sections and include step-by-step activities, timings and even interactions. They can also include sections on anticipating problems and developing possible solutions. But are there any disadvantages to this high degree of planning? Anthony Gaughan recently suggested one:

“it’s curious though, that no standard lesson plan pro-forma contains sections asking learners to look out for opportunities and leverage points. The closest we get is asking, “what if this is too easy? (ie PROBLEM)”

With an extremely rigid plan that takes account of every minute and activity we can be faced with a difficult dilemma when a spontaneous learning opportunity arises: should we ignore it or seize it? The latter option will obviously mean diverging from the plan or even worse, abandoning it all together. For those of us who have been raised on a diet of daily lesson planning this thought could be petrifying.

When it comes to pro-forma planning, could there be a more effective system of lesson planning available to help with flexibility when faced with changing variable factors in the classroom? While I intend no disrespect to a well-planned lesson, I wonder if prospective planning makes us even more rigid in our profession and less willing to respond to these emerging phenomena in lessons?

Here are some examples of a few changing variables that I have come across in my class:

• Learners request some work on X grammar point in a lesson or want to know more about X topic for lexis
• A topic of conversation emerges from an activity that interests the class
• Homework designed to be integrated into the lesson is not done
• Half the class are absent
• Lesson aims turn out to be too easy/difficult for learners
• Not enough materials/activities planned for the lesson

Sound familiar? Of course, the seasoned teacher can easily react to these classroom interactions using years of knowledge built up from previous experience. With less experience though this is tends to be a bit trickier or even impossible.

Lesson skeletons

 

If the path ahead is not clear, then why is planning so linear?

One thing I found particularly helpful in increasing the flexibility of my approach to teaching was creating a loose framework of a lesson to act as a guide. Adding potential avenues which the lesson could down to the plan made me feel more confident and better preapred to respond to classroom interaction. A month or so ago, I started a section of my blog called ‘lesson skeletons’, which is designed to be a space for lesson ideas that allow for deviation and include room for lesson interactions. What would a lesson skeleton include?

Here is an example of a lesson skeleton I use with classes:

 

An activity that encourages discussion on a topic/language area	Sit in a circle count, stopping every 2/3 and say something about the public transport in the city you are in. Remove the stabilisers (counting) and allow discussions to run and questions to flow.
Consolidation of ideas to focus onto language	Ask learners to make a ‘good points’ and ‘room for improvement’ to consolidate and extend
An extension of language activity	Ask learners to write their ideas on one half of the board under ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Elicit some corrections and add related language on the other side of the board.Discuss as a class, pushing students to express their own standpoint.
Change of skills focus	Write a newspaper article supporting or criticising/letter to the mayor to suggest improvements
Change of language focus	Role-play a question and answer session in conference/political debate on the future of transport in the city.

 

The left hand column represents a very simmered-down version of a lesson skeleton, stripped down to stage aims. The right hand column includes the introduction of a topic but not a language aim.

This skeleton would be useful either in preparation for a lesson with an initial language aim or with a focus on emerging language. It could be used to take a topic off the page of a course book and make it more engaging for a lesson. Alternatively, during a lesson it could be drawn upon to focus on a topic that has interested students.

As and when learning opportunities arise in the lesson, a skeleton allows deviation from the original aim or plan and for focus on what is immediately difficult or important for students. The space is there for making the most of learning opportunities and the teacher has the freedom to deviate, with ideas in mind to do so and exploit these moments.

Once having a skeleton in hand, I start to anticipate the sorts of language and difficulties that may emerge from it. If I have a lesson aim, I consider how quickly students will achieve it and the types of extra language related problems associated with it. Pre-lesson brainstorming in this way helps me predict, using what I know of teaching the level/using the skeleton/needs-analysis and makes the inevitable emergence of other classroom interactions easier to deal with when they come up. To aid me I have found it useful to put my ideas on paper in the form of a flow diagram containing extra stages in the lesson to deal various changeable variables.

Retrospective lesson planning – filling in the flesh

 

In a recent post, I looked at some of the advantages to teachers of keeping a reflective journal. I am a firm believer in the benefits of keeping a teaching journal and much of what I write in mine concerns the ‘flesh’ of the lesson – what was the language, how did I fill in the skeleton what would I do differently if given the opportunity to repeat the lesson. This raises four questions:

1. Was the language suitable for my lesson aims/student difficulties/level?
2. In each stage did I teach according to X-norm or Y-methodology or Z-belief about language learning?
3. What have I learned about X-lesson skeleton/idea that I would include for the next time I use it?
4. Did my lesson unfold as I had planned it to, if not then what type of classroom interaction made me deviate and how did I deal with this?

Reflecting in this way not only makes me more prepared for the next time I teach, but it also helps me identify my own teaching behaviours in the classroom, putting them under the microscope and forcing me to think about them in terms of learners and language.

 

Why lesson skeletons then?

 

1. Let’s take it as cyclical process, in this way it stocks up your teaching ideas with a store of instantly retrievable lesson plans not only helpful for planning, but also during the lesson, as and when interaction opportunities arise. Since there is space for deviation within a lesson skeleton, it provides a blank canvas that can be applied during a lesson in response to classroom interaction.
2. Much less necessity to administer a lesson plan has given me more chances to listen to students, take into consideration what they produce and anaylse it for how it can be extended and what there is to work on.
3. Less time in front of the photocopier or resource book selecting and copying activities to pad out lesson time and supplement the course book because extra classroom time can be dedicated to extending language and reacting to interaction.

The syllabus and work records, how do the fit in?

 

Work records, aims, pages of the course book, language points to tick off on a syllabus – these are parts of daily life for many teachers. In fact, far from hindering, retrospective lesson planning and lesson skeletons may even provide a more accurate record of learning outcomes, skills covered and language covered during a course; it takes into account the fruits of harnessing the power of classroom interaction.

So instead of abandoning our lesson plan, a few minor tweaks to the structure and the mindset of planning a lesson mean that we make room space for deviation, making it less of a plunge into the deep end when responding to learning opportunities. With retrospective planning, there is always the chance to look back over things and learn from each experience, modifying the original plan and reflecting on how learning moments were harnessed to their full potential.

After all, if it goes wrong, you’ve just come across a learning opportunity…

Reflective Journals

What exactly is a reflective journal?

 

This is the same question I asked myself after leaving a stationary shop with a stylish leather-clad diary in hand. I opened it at the first page, wrote the date, some information on the class and the rest, as they say, is history. Having used various forms of a journal in the past 18 months, I have come to realise that the primary aim of it is to provide a space to articulate and download your thoughts. What’s more, using Dogme, I wanted to be sure that I had both a record of what I was teaching and how I was teaching it.

 

 

How was my journal conceived?

 

As I mentioned, about a year and a half ago I started keeping a teaching journal. The thinking behind it involved a desperate attempt to control a class of rowdy teenagers, all uninterested in English at 7pm on a Friday evening. The idea was developed from a black book of successful lesson ideas, tried and tested in the classroom, unpacked and recorded in this book for future use. The new-look journal documented changes in behaviour of the class during the course, including post-lesson reflections on the efficacy of my attempts to pacify the war zone. Three months of reflective experimentation with the class saw improvements in their behaviour, their motivation and my attitude towards the students. Success motivated me to reflect more, including my thoughts from other classes in the diary, including a Dogme class I included in my presentation at IATEFL 2010, but also classes with which I used course books, YLs classes and exam classes.

 

Dear diary, today…

 

Well, not quite, but some of my entries bear some resemblance to the classic dear-diary structure. Mostly, entries focused on capturing as best as I could remember what had happened in the classroom. With this information on paper, I re-read it and asked myself  for instance why I did things in X way or what would be the benefit of doing X before Y. The guiding question that emerged was:

 

Is this right because I do it, or do I do it because it’s right?

 

The bold to me represents ritualised practices and routines, which have a large part to play in a lesson, whether positive or negative. Once on recorded in the journal, I started to question these, asking for example why I used to elicit answers in full-class plenary or why I used pairwork instead of open-class discussion. The implication of this is that established classroom practices become those that are based on successful models, tried and tested in class.

Is a teacher’s intuition and existing belief set enough to act as a guide though? Of course, this relies upon a person being very observant and having a heightened sense of self-awareness regarding their practice.

 

But doesn’t this mean I will spend more time planning?

 

I will be the first to admit that it adds to your planning time, around 30-45 minutes per lesson. Consider it a start-up cost, an investment. Much like lesson planning immediately after qualifying, it reduces very quickly. After a few months the way in which I planned had turned completely on its head; reflecting on the lesson after it happened prepared me to teach the next, like retrospective lesson planning.

 

How do you know the right questions to ask?

 

Good point. I certainly did not have a highly developed reflective capacity at the start and there were times where I felt like I was reaching a dead end. From looking back on early diary entries, the focus was more on capturing the information and detecting patterns in my classroom routine. The addition of student feedback guided me towards what to ask and was included in journal reviews, where I put my practice under the microscope and extracted what to keep and what to throw.

 

You’ve mentioned ‘awareness’, what do you mean by this?

 

I guess it lies in the ability to look at your classroom as an outsider and pick up on what is happening, This is by no means easy, as the pen is in the teacher’s hand, which is influenced inextricably by existing beliefs on teaching and even the surrounding social and cultural context. Therefore, is subjectivity possible in a journal? Or should the aim be to reflect on, formulate and reinforce your practice?

 

That’s all very well, but what do you actually write?

 

From my experiences with a journal, I would recommend putting on paper what is on your mind at the moment of writing. This is already a step towards bringing things to the surface. A lot of the time an entry included my concerns over why learners had difficulties or why some did not seem engaged in the lesson. In fact, these thoughts still come up and often form the basis of a foray into the past, reviewing the lesson structure, materials, interaction, language/skills focus etc in order to make a few pedagogical tweaks to it ready for next time.

 

Might it not be beneficial to get a second opinion from a more experienced teacher?

 

I would be the first to say so. In fact, it might be beneficial for both parties, especially if there were some sort of mentor system set up to support this. I found exchanging ideas with a mentor very helpful for my growth as a teacher. In other cases, I found the dialogue-with-myself aspect of the journal very comforting, especially if I did not feel confident talking to colleagues about something, or if nobody was available.

 

So what are some of the benefits?

 

1.   Bad lessons are not thrown in the rubbish bin

 

Everyone has lesson they would rather forget. Instead of being forgotten about, they can serve as useful learning moments for a teacher. Placing yourself in the shoes of the students in an attempt to pinpoint what went wrong has its benefits. Not only does it make you consider your role, but also that you might not be to blame. Sometimes, however hard you try, things just do not go well.

 

2.     Strengths are identified

 

We all have them, but sometimes it is easy to forget what we actually do well. Especially in the face of some bad feedback or a lesson that went badly. Not only this, but also, there is an extra benefit of being aware of your strengths: they form the basis of your day-to-day teaching to make sure learners benefit from the best their teacher has to offer.

 

3.     Areas to work on become more apparent

 

When something appears consistently in the journal as less positive, it is time to make an action plan to improve it. In addition to this, looking out for what is missing (just like we do with our students) can uncover a springboard for a research project and structure a sort of self-directed development, based on what you need at that time.

 

I will wrap up with a few final thoughts, one from an article written by Scott Thornbury (1990)

“Might not the detection and analysis of teaching rituals… provide insights into a teacher’s image set?”

Now for a few questions…

 

• Directors and managers, how can you create the right conditions in your staff rooms to encourage teachers to detect and analyse their teaching rituals?
• Trainers, how much of your course is dedicated to guiding teachers towards becoming reflective individuals, able to ask questions about their practice in their formative years of teaching after qualifying?
• New teachers/experienced teachers/senior or expert teachers/EFL gurus, have you tried keeping a journal? If so, what form did it take and would you recommend it?

Dale

Thornbury, S. (1990). Metaphors we work by: EFL and its metaphors. ELT Journal, 45/3