Tonight, after putting the kids to bed, as I was trying to catch up with the tweets and #ELTChat one tweet, from a teacher who I greatly enjoy sharing and chatting with (and who also has a Brazilian heart), caught my attention:
A tweet suggesting a new #ELTpics... that turns into a blog post 
Guido was suggesting a new topic for #ELTpics (A great idea lead by @VictoriaB52. A set of photos, based on a weekly theme, taken by ELT teachers, trainers and writers from around the world. These are, in turn, available free to others in the field of ELT under a CC license. Anyone interested in joining in can tweet an image with the hashtag #eltpics). He thought we could share pictures of our lesson plans. I liked the idea, but we then talked about the objective of #ELTpics and we thought maybe it wouldn’t be adequate. But I had already been bitten by the curious bug, wanting to know how my PLN did their lesson plans – if they did it at all! So I decided to write a post about it, telling a bit of my lesson plan “history”. But more than showing what my plans are like and the rationale behind it, I want to know how other teachers do it (or if they do it at all) and why. So I decided maybe it was time for me to stop just joining challenges and setting one of my own. So here’s the challenge:
Do you write your lesson plans? If so, how do you do it, what is the format?
Why and how did you arrive at that format?
If you feel like joining the challenge (and I really hope you do) you can blog about it - and I’ll add a link to your post here. If you don’t have a blog but you’d still like to join the challenge you can send me your lesson plan story through email and I’ll post it here. I think sharing our lesson plans will be a great way of finding new ways of doing it, maybe even finding one we would like to try doing, or ideas to adapt the way we do it now. After all, like so many other things in teaching, there’s no right or wrong - each person works best in their particular way.
So, here’s my lesson plan story: When I started teaching, about 17 years ago, I did it after taking a TTC (Teacher Training Course), in which we learned how to write a lesson plan, how we should do it. It was a very thorough and long format, that included the aim of the lesson, the procedures for each activity, the material needed for each of them, as well as the time they should take. It also contained the type of interaction of the activities (T-ST / ST-ST). I planned my lessons like that for a few years and it was really helpful in my development as a teacher because it made me reflect about what I did in class, the purpose of each activity, etc. But it took ages to write the plan for each class, for each group. So after a few years, and with a great number of different groups/levels each semester, I decided it was time to change and make things simpler. So I started writing just the procedures, followed by the time and material for each activity. After a while (in an attempt to take even less time, optimize things) there were some very slight changes and my plans looked like this (yes, I keep a lot of old lesson plans that I rarely look at and mostly just gather dust – this one is about 7 years old):
(By the way, no jokes about the Pooh paper, please. I (like many other teachers I know) indulge in a little “cutesy” with my teaching materials once in a while. ) Up til this point I always wrote my plans on paper. At this point, in the school I work at, we started using Palms to do role call and other administrative procedures. To make my life easier (and save some trees) I began doing my plans digitally, typing them on a Word Processor (sample here: Lesson Plan AE SL ) and just uploading to the Palm. I still kept the format though. This lasted about a year. I know what I’m about to say is completely eco-UNfriendly, but I love writing the plans, using pen and paper. Sitting in front of a screen and doing it just didn’t do it for me. So I went back to paper. The last evolution/development my lesson planning has gone through was making it even simpler. I now use index cards. Most times one is enough – front and back. I assign a color to each different group and I use little round stickers on the corner of the index card to signal the group that plan is for. I also write the class number inside the sticker. I take the card to class and after it I collect them all into a box, categorized by color/group. I no longer write the material needed. So now they look like this:
What my lesson plans look like these days...
Why I do it like this now? Do I think being as thorough as I was in the beginning was a waste of time? Not at all!! It’s just that after so many years teaching there are some things that I don’t need to write down on paper anymore, that I just run through my mind. I’ve been using this format for the past 3 years, and still feels like the best one for me.
So, up to the challenge? What is your lesson plan story? I’d love to read about it!
Updates of Teachers joining in the challenge:
• Sandy Millin’s (@sandymillin) ”Planning Evolution” post
• Ceri Jones explains (@cerirhiannon) the lesson plan from the day she had Flashes of Inspiration: My Lesson Plan: A Walk-through for Ceci
• Marisa Pavan (@Mtranslator) shows her Lesson Plan History
• Tyson Seburn (@seburnt) reflects on his Lesson Plan Transformation
• Jason Renshaw’s (@englishraven) analyzes lesson planning on Without Reflection, We May Be Planning to stand Still
• Anna Bring and her Lesson Planning in Evolution
• @EclipsingX ‘s colorful lesson planand her use of index cards for LP after reading this post
