3. Planning principles
The two overriding principles behind good lesson planning are variety and flexibility.
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Variety is a principle that applies especially to a series of classes. Variety means involving students in a number of different types of activity and where
possible introducing them to a wide selection of materials. Variety means planning so that learning is, for the students, always interesting and never monotonous.
The second principle is flexibility. Flexibility is also important when dealing with the plan in the classroom; for any number of reasons what the teacher has
planned may not be appropriate for that class on that particular day. Flexibility means the ability to use any number of different techniques but not to be a slave to one
methodology. Flexibility is the genuinely adoptable teacher. The teacher who believes in variety will have to be flexible since the only way
to provide variety is to use a number of different techniques.
4. Pre – Planning
Before the teacher actually writes down the detailed contents of such a planning, he will need to think generally about what he is going to do. This pre-
planning is formed.
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Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 3
rd
ed, London: Longman, 2001, p. 308-309
The idea of the pre-planning is for the teacher to get a general idea what he is going to do in the next class or classes. This pre-planning has four elements; they are
activities, skills, language and content. The four major elements of the pre-planning are:
1 Activities
Activity is a loose term used to give a general description of what will happen in class. The decisions about what activities to be included in a planning
is a vital stage in the planning. The teacher is forced to consider, what would be most beneficial and motivating for the students.
Teacher has to make decisions about activities independently of what language or skills they have to teach and also in terms of the class period itself as
“the allocation of time”, the sequencing and the timing or pacing of flow of content and materials during the lessons.
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2 Skills
The teacher will have to decide what language skills to include in class. Sometimes, of course, this decisions will already have been taken when the
activity has been selected. In the case of more general activities, the teacher will then decide whether he wishes to concentrate on one skill or a combination of
skills. This choice is sometimes determined by the syllabus or the course book.
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Timothy R. Blair, Emerging Patterns of Teaching; From Methods to Field Experiences, Colombus: Merril Publising Company, 1988, p. 59
However, the teachers still need to plan exactly how students are going to work with the skill and what sub-skills are going to be practiced.
3 Language
The teacher needs to decide what language to introduce and have the students learn, practice, or use. One of the dangers of planning decisions is that
where language is the main focus it is the first and only planning decisions that the teacher make. Once the decisions has been taken to teach the present
continuous, for example, it is sometimes tempting to slip back into a drill- dominated teaching sessions which is lack of variety and which may not be the
best way to achieve teachers’ aims. But language is only one area that we need to consider when planning lessons.
4 Content
Lesson planners have to select the content that has a good chance of provoking interest and involvement since they know their students personally
they are well placed to select appropriate content. The teacher who knows his students and what they bring to class will be in
a much better position to choose subject and content than a teacher who does not. And this knowledge is vital since one of the main functions of language is to
communication interest and ideas. After teachers consider those four elements, then she should soon
determine the form of the basis of the pre-planning. When the teacher has a general idea of what he is going to do in his class as a result of considering the
four elements in the pre-planning, then he will consider the institution and the restrictions it imposes.
5. The Planning
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