The Importance of Planning your Lessons
By
Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano
Sunday,
October 5, 2014
Twitter:
@jonacuso
Post
153
There is no doubt of the tremendous importance
of planning one’s lessons carefully, which is decisive and vital to support
students’ deep learning of the content and to ensure that learning lasts beyond the end-of-class farewell. For this reason,
there are indeed several factors that can doubtlessly and directly affect the
steps followed for planning and assessing learners and the tryout of new ideas
that can be incorporated to one’s way of planning and assessment as well.
“What
steps do you work through to plan your lessons and student assessments? How
effective do you believe they are?” (Laureate Education, 2014). When inquired
about this, one must reflectively consider how one goes about planning lessons.
In my case, planning bas become a series of steps that consists of the
following: 1) reviewing course (outline) objectives to have my teaching aligned
with them, 2) course content attached to the objectives and that needs to be
learned by students, 3) the learning outcomes that I visualize for my students
in term of skill development, and 4) the way I want to test student learning
(assessment of skill or behavior). In regards to effectiveness, like in any
other process, planning becomes –at times-
a trial-and-error mechanism. That is, there is always room for improvement, but
that improvement depends on the ethnographic characteristics found amongst
one’s students and their learning backgrounds: Deep Learners vs.
Surface Learners. Every single class, then, is a radically different
teaching and learning scenario that positively challenges both the instructor
and the learner.
“What
new ideas about lesson planning and assessment … might you incorporate into
your teaching?” (Laureate Education, 2014). In terms of the search for optimal
planning and assessment techniques, faculty members, as well as any other
teacher at any level (in primary or high school), must rely on their vivid
creativity to always find alternative ways of assessing student learning outcomes.
The incorporation of new trends in educational assessment, or even old ones one
has never tried before, can shift one’s perception of the learning process that
leads students to build and consolidate knowledge, skills, and, why not, even
competencies. As a faculty member of the English Department at Universidad
Latina, I have consistently tried different ways to help learners achieve course
learning goals and to expand their horizons in terms of skills that can turn
into competences for their future or current working performance; among these
tryouts with college students I have to mention Web Questing (part of
Project-Based Learning) combined with blogging, IBL (Internet-Based Learning)
research assignments aiming at developing students’ hierarchical thinking,
Blended Learning where students work on a Moodle LMS, etc. And I must admit
that learners’ performance has been improving the more I polish assignments for
student assessment.
A
lot can be reflected upon activities that can boost student participation in
and out of the classroom, as well as planning and assessment. Participation
boosters, whether they are incorporated while working with pupils F2F or while
students are using social media networks, are necessary to consolidate
learner’s learning process and to validate the accomplishment of learning
goals, one’s lesson planning, and the assessment tool one has chosen to provide
formative and summative feedback to students. Education is indeed a complex
process we are immersed along with our pupils. Words such as success and
failure in one’s teaching are no doubt labels we can attach to a process that
lacks prioritization of student learning.
ESL
Sparks. (2012, Nov. 8). The Art of Lesson Planning. [PPT]. Retrieved on 2014,
October 4 from the Slide Share website at http://www.slideshare.net/EslSparks/the-art-of-lesson-planning?related=1
Laureate
Education. (2014). Certificate in Higher Education.
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Sunday, October 05, 2014
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