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Q&A of Important Questions
(a) What is a Unit Plan?
· Series of lesson plans (X number)
(b) What are Learning Outcomes?
· Terminal (‘die die must have’; e.g. by the end of Sec 1, students at that level MUST have those competencies, e.g. able to write an expository paper; at the end of each year)
· Spiral progression is long-term (within a lesson there is only a gradation of learning)
(c) What is a Lesson Plan?
· Represents the different stages of each of the components (pre, main, and post: and within each, there are steps)
· Must end with a consolidation
(d) What are Lesson Objectives?
· SSABs: skills, strategies, attitudes and behaviours
· No more than 2 small LOs within one lesson of 60 minutes
(e) What are some synonyms for ‘Objectives’?
· Goals, Purpose, Aims (in alignment with the national syllabus)
(f) What is the purpose of lesson objectives? (For the child and for the teacher)
· Important for students because it tells them what they need to learn by the end of 60 minutes
· No need to write it on the board (unless the school / HOD / RO tells you to): BUT important to verbalize it
o E.g. today we’re going to cover XXX
o ‘We build skills from external-out, not internal-in’
o Need to check for understanding
· Important for teachers because it guides the process and allows the teacher to envision what will happen in the classroom
o To ‘envision’ is important: have the lesson run in your brain
o What looks good on paper may not in your mind, not to mention in real life with 40 living, breathing human beings
o Imagine the profile: anything can happen in your classroom
o Even your jokes are pre-planned
o Know what the students are doing even when you’re not looking at them
(g) How do CLLIPS and ACoLADEs relate to lesson planning / enactment?
· Principles of EL teaching and learning: underpin the lessons
· Processes of EL teaching and learning: actions taken in class
o Always in context
o There is always a dominant and a secondary skill
(h) What are Educational Standards?
· For all subjects: they are the Desired Outcomes of Education for every child on a national level
· For EL: they are the large LOs
(i) What are Teaching Modes?
· They are our teaching strategies: DRTA, DVTA, Joint Construction, process writing, etc.
(j) What the teacher should look out for when implementing a planned lesson?
· N.B. You should not be looking at your lesson plan when carrying out your lesson
o Because you should have internalized it
· You should be looking at the children: body language
· You should be looking at their questions: what kinds of questions are they asking? And if they don’t ask, you should be asking them questions (and eventually they’ll prefer to ask rather than have you ask them painful and difficult questions)
o The children need to know the rules of the game: i.e. understand that you won’t allow them to get away with murder (i.e. do nothing)
o English is the medium of communication so we cater across the board
o When checking for understanding, if you find that they don’t get it, you can’t move on – isolate exactly what the child doesn’t get
o This is NOT about the teacher finishing the lesson plan: because ‘finishing’ it doesn’t mean that the students have learnt
o Listen in during learner-centred group work
o If you’re being observed, and you’re asked why you didn’t finish your lesson plan, explain that: because from XXX’s question, it was clear that he knew about this A but not B, and when I checked with YYY, she also knew only about A but not B, which meant that the plan had to change in order to optimize learning
o E.g. after PE, they will be hyperactive: you can’t teach a frontal lesson then
o The child is giving you 60 minutes of his life: you should make the most of it
§ They don’t have a choice about which lessons to attend – from 7.30am onwards right till the end of the day
o If you’re given 35 minutes, you have only time to teach one thing: hardly any time for hands-on activity
§ E.g. instead, they can do pair work
o If you’re given 60 minutes, you can still teach one thing, but have gradations
(k) How does the teacher know that pupils have learnt?
· Short term: body language; how they respond to questions; whether they’re asking higher-order thinking questions
· Long term: exams and tests
(l) What are the principles that must be considered when developing unit / lesson plans?
· Student profile
· Relevance (is it aligned to the LOs and the overall SOW)
· Catering to the needs, interests, abilities of children
· Different modalities of the text
· Logistics; availability
· Gender
· Socio-political sensitivities
· Length; time you have
· Class size
· Time of the day
o Try not to have the first lesson be your lesson observation period: the principal will keep talking and eat into your time
o Before recess, and the last lesson will be problematic too
o Prime time is around 9am: still alert; the window-shoppers will have finished waving hi to their friends; OR the second period after recess (N.B. you often inherit them after PE)
(m) What does a teacher do in the pre-evaluation, during-use evaluation, and post-evaluation stages of material evaluation?
· Pre-evaluation: envision the class and whether they can handle it
· During-use evaluation: check with the students whether the instructions are clear, or too difficult or too easy
o Check at two levels, i.e. faster ones and slower ones
o Always have a back-up for the faster ones
§ The faster ones get it (and you know it because they can answer your questions)
§ E.g. one ST used song lyrics, Katy Perry’s ‘Fireworks’
· They finished in 15 minutes (but was planned for 50 minutes)
· It was meant to be about the grammatical element
· The lesson went out the window, and it was an observation
§ Text choice is essential
· E.g. the Beatles was before we were born, or 80s or 90s music
· When it’s too new, they actually know it better than you
o OR it’s water off a duck’s back: too difficult etc.
· Post-evaluation: check the quality of their work
o To show the quality of their thinking
§ E.g. controversial song lyrics (‘Free Nelson Mandela’): if they’re only asking about lower-order level questions, you know that they haven’t learnt yet
§ Now we need divergent thought
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