Forums

1. I think my planning style is most like Deniz’s, but it also has something from Paolo’s. I also teach in secondary school. In my school students have three English classes a week, of one hour each. When I’m planning I always bear in mind the aims of the lesson. I think it’s important not to forget why is the aim of doing something. Of course, the aim is learning but we can’t forget there’s a curriculum that we have to follow. In one hour I don’t always have time to work all skills. So I usually focus on one or two skills in each class because time is limited. Next class, I’ll try to recover what we did in the previous class and keep working.
2. I reckon creativity is one of the main qualities while planning a unit of work. Learning a language is communicating and communication is unpredictable and full of creativity. Other important qualities are cohesion, flow and variety. Logic is also useful to make grammar clear or to learn how to predict some vocabulary, for example. Relevance and balance should take into account according to the level of English students have.
3. When I plan a lesson I look at the communicative aims. I try to think what will students need apart from what the coursebook offers. I use the coursebook because it is the reference students have, otherwise some of them get lost because they are still young and they are still learning to learn. I usually plan a lesson at a time. I try to include readings and listenings from the news related to the topic we are working on. That way, students are connected to what’s going on in their daily lives. I don’t usually plan it in great detail because something new will always come out.
4. I recommend to think on something and to put it into practice in class to see how it works in this particular class. Each class is different, with different mixed-abilities. Of course, I’ll recommend the new teacher to be very flexible and open to changes. To accept that improvisation is part of our work.