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Lesson Planner's Block
Thursday, October 11th, 2007 02:13 pmAfter starting a spirited discussion in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
academics_anon on observation of tutorials, I remembered that I had an observation of a proper lesson, not a tutorial, on Monday, and I'm supposed to give my line manager a copy of the lesson plan. (Yes, universities have degenerated to the point that now they use terms like "line manager", though to her credit, the woman in question detests the phrase.)
The problem is that normally I don't do lesson plans, or at least not the kind that could be understood by anyone else. Writing formal lesson plans is a valuable exercise for teachers starting out in the profession, since it makes them think not only about what they're going to do but why they're doing it, what equipment they might need and, most importantly, how long it's likely to take. Such plans have subtitles like "Student Profile", "Anticipated difficulties" and "Syllabus Fit" and generally take three times as long to write as the lesson does to teach, which is why most teachers stop doing them once they've got through their probation period. These days, my lessons plans are usually something like "Do something with Book I of Aristotle's Ethics" or "Talk about vampires."
But then observation time comes round, and we have to remember how those lesson plan thingies work. Fortunately, I have one from a previous observation on my hard disk, so I have a template to work from. I've done the routine stuff like time and place of class, student profile, materials and syllabus fit, but now I have to think what I'm actually going to teach. As you may have guessed from the fact that I'm taking time off to write in this journal, I'm stumped. My original lesson plan was indeed "Do something with Book I of Aristotle's Ethics" and if it were a normal, non-observed lesson, I could probably have gone in and done something, and it would probably have worked out fine. But this won't wash for an observed lesson. For a start, each activity is supposed to have an aim, and I often don't know what the aim of an activity is until I've done it, especially since it often mutates into a completely different activity.
Hmm, hmmm, aims, objectives, activities, stages ...
TREE DIAGRAMS! There, I have it! When in doubt, do tree diagrams.
academics_anon on observation of tutorials, I remembered that I had an observation of a proper lesson, not a tutorial, on Monday, and I'm supposed to give my line manager a copy of the lesson plan. (Yes, universities have degenerated to the point that now they use terms like "line manager", though to her credit, the woman in question detests the phrase.)The problem is that normally I don't do lesson plans, or at least not the kind that could be understood by anyone else. Writing formal lesson plans is a valuable exercise for teachers starting out in the profession, since it makes them think not only about what they're going to do but why they're doing it, what equipment they might need and, most importantly, how long it's likely to take. Such plans have subtitles like "Student Profile", "Anticipated difficulties" and "Syllabus Fit" and generally take three times as long to write as the lesson does to teach, which is why most teachers stop doing them once they've got through their probation period. These days, my lessons plans are usually something like "Do something with Book I of Aristotle's Ethics" or "Talk about vampires."
But then observation time comes round, and we have to remember how those lesson plan thingies work. Fortunately, I have one from a previous observation on my hard disk, so I have a template to work from. I've done the routine stuff like time and place of class, student profile, materials and syllabus fit, but now I have to think what I'm actually going to teach. As you may have guessed from the fact that I'm taking time off to write in this journal, I'm stumped. My original lesson plan was indeed "Do something with Book I of Aristotle's Ethics" and if it were a normal, non-observed lesson, I could probably have gone in and done something, and it would probably have worked out fine. But this won't wash for an observed lesson. For a start, each activity is supposed to have an aim, and I often don't know what the aim of an activity is until I've done it, especially since it often mutates into a completely different activity.
Hmm, hmmm, aims, objectives, activities, stages ...
TREE DIAGRAMS! There, I have it! When in doubt, do tree diagrams.
