Planning of the course

Planning of the Course
“The best teachers are those who think carefully about what they are going to do in their classes and who plan how they are going to organize the teaching and learning”
Jeremy Harmer “The practice of English language teaching” 1991
Why plan?
Some teachers especially those with experience believe that they don’t need to plan their course and lessons. Others especially those with lack of teaching practice don’t do any planning because they simply don’t know why and how to do it. However, most teachers go on preparing lessons throughout their careers, even if their plans are very informal.
Imaging you are starting a journey but with no idea where you are going. You are the driver of a vehicle full of students and though you know you have to drive them for a particular period of time, without a map you have no idea where you want to go or how to get there. It may be an interesting journey but it would be very easy to get lost and your passengers wouldn’t be happy. If you imagine the learning is like a journey than the plan is like a map. Without planning the course could be chaotic and leave the students with no clear idea of what they were doing and why. This kind of uncertainty is not good for effective learning or class discipline.
For students, the fact that their teacher has a plan for the course and the lesson shows that the teacher has devoted time to think about the class. It strongly proves the high level of professionalism and the teacher’s responsibility. Lack of the plan may suggest the negative attitude of the teacher to his work and to his students.
For the teacher, the plan gives the course and the separate lessons the frame, the structure, the aims and objectives and anticipated results. Of course, good teachers are flexible and respond creatively to what is going on in the classroom but they also need to think ahead, to see a destination they want their students to reach and to know how they will get there.
Planning of the unit and of the whole year course allows the teacher to have ideas for tomorrow’s and next week’s lessons. Finally, planning helps both teachers and students because it gives confidence.
No plan is written on tablets of stone, however. Of course, we’ll be happy if everything goes according to plan, but it often doesn’t. All sorts of things can go wrong: equipment not working bored students, students who haven’t prepared their homework or haven’t brought their textbooks, students who ask unexpected questions or changes in the timetable. So the teacher has to be flexible to leave the plan or to change it immediately, to correct it and to make it appropriate to the current situation in the classroom. Sometimes the plan has to be abandoned completely and the teacher has to look at it again later and see if some parts of it are recoverable for future lessons.
What are the aims of a plan?
A good course needs to contain a blend of coherence and variety. Coherence means the students can see a logical pattern to the lesson, the unit and the course. There has to be connection between the activities in the lesson and between the lessons in the unit. In this context it would not make sense to have students write an essay at the beginning of the unit. At the same time the lack of variety would be equally damaging. Just imagine you ask students to read the texts at every lesson! The ideal compromise is to plan the course that has an internal coherence while giving the students the opportunity to do different things.
What should be in a plan?
The plan can be as scrappy or as detailed as the teacher thinks is necessary for him. If you look at experienced teachers’ plans you may find they’ve simply written down the name of the activity and a page number from a book. Such notes look rather simple but in fact give the teacher all he needs to remind him of all the necessary elements. Still other teachers put down their plans in much more details even with greeting and parting phrases.
On teacher training courses participants are often asked for a written plan which follows a particular format. The formats are various depending of the course but all plans have the same ingredients: they say who is going to be taught, what they are going to learn and how they are going to do it. The first point is the information about the students: their number, age, level of knowledge, abilities, temperaments, cooperativeness etc. The next thing the plan contains is what the students will learn and do and what the logical sequence of things is. The third aspect of a plan says how the teacher and students will do it, what patterns of interaction will be, how long will it last, what classroom materials and aids the teacher is going to use. Lastly the plan will show how every lesson fits in with lessons before and after it.
What form should a plan take?
There is no ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ format of a course plan. It should be useful for the teacher and for anyone who is observing you. Some teachers write their plans on cards, some prefer handwritten sheets others type it on a word processor. Some teachers highlight parts of their plan with coloured pens, divide the plan into columns, and write comments, timing and aims. Still other have an introduction page with the information about the students, aims of the course etc. It’s a good idea for practicing teachers to experiment with plan formats until they find one that is most useful for them.
Variety in classroom activities and teacher’s behavior is vital as it’s an antidote to student and teacher boredom. This means that when teachers plan their lessons they build in changes of activity and a variety of exercise. The same principle applies to a sequence of lessons stretching for a longer period of time: a week, a month or a term. Once again students will see a coherent pattern of progress and topic-linking so that there is a connection between lessons and they can perceive some overall aims and objectives. Most teachers and students find this preferable to a series of lessons.
However two dangers may threaten the success: the predictability and the sameness. Despite the need for coherence, teachers must remember that if students know exactly what to expect they are likely to be less motivated. In the same way they may feel less enthusiastic about today’s lesson if it starts with exactly the same kind of activity as yesterday’s lesson.
An ideal sequence is based on one topic and has threads running through it for two-week period. Then all skills will be covered appropriately, they will happen in a logical sequence and there will be a range of activities which brings interest to the learning process. A long-teaching sequence is made up of shorter sequences (five or six lessons)) which are made up of even smaller sequences (one or two lessons).
To sum it up we’d like to say that planning helps to focus our minds, to have something to refer to in the middle of the class, unit, term or course. It shows that we are professional and we care. Whatever the format of the plan, it should tell who is going to be taught, what and how they are going to do it. The actual format of a plan is a matter of personal preference of a teacher. Planning a series of lessons or a whole course is based on the same principles as planning a lesson.
The course of English for schools specialized in English by O.V. Afanasyeva and I.V. Mikheeva is highly appreciated by many teachers in Russia. We are not an exception here and have been working with this course for many years. But starting with English VII the authors offer rather large units in the course book and the units are not divided into separate lessons (periods). The Teacher’s book gives the sample of the course planning but it also contains only whole-unit sections while it’s rather difficult to use this format in everyday teaching practice especially for an inexperienced teacher.
That’s why we suggest planning of the course English VII by these authors according to 5-hour a week timetable. First look through the Student’s Book and the calendar. You’ll see you’ll have 170 periods during the school year. You’ll also see Unit 1 is Revision after long summer holidays. Though it’s shorter than the other units it contains a lot of new and useful material for learning (let’s leave 8 periods for this Unit). Unit 5 “Christmas” can be left behind and used for extra-curricular activities e.g. Christmas parties, celebrations, contests etc. Unit 9 is general revision of the course. We usually leave it for May combining it with the preparing for the end-of-the school year assessment.
That way we have six equally-long units for about 28 weeks or 140 periods. So each unit will take 23 periods. Besides the Student’s Book we have Activity Book, the exercises from which can be logically inserted into the lessons, used for individual tasks, tests or optional lessons. We have Reader with a wonderful story “Five on the Treasure Island” which can also be given students for home reading, extensive reading practice during the school holidays, individual work for gifted students or those who have a special interest in English learning. We also have a tape with an audio book “Secret Seven” which consists of twenty chapters. It’s ideal if the students you work with acquire the language knowledge at high speed and then you can use the audio book for special listening comprehension lessons. If not, you can organize a Listening Club or Society and enjoy the activity after classes. Looking through the Units, think if you’ll need extra materials and which ones.
The appearance of the material in the unit is not always useful for straightforward learning. For example, at the beginning of the units the students are asked to answer the comprehension questions and express their opinion on the issue but the necessary lexis structures are in the Discussing the Topic section at the end of the Unit. So we start with this section first. We often have to change the order of material given in the Student’s Book to make the sequence more logical. For example, we use ex60p49 while working on the text ex23p30-31. Our students have poor skills in oral dialogical speech, that’s why we change some tasks to make them more communicative. The authors offer few exercises to be done in written form and they have training grammar or lexis character. So we try to distribute these exercises through the unit according to the material learnt and add some more from the Activity Book or other resources. There are no tasks developing creative writing skills in the course, that’s why we add at least two activities to develop the skill of writing a postcard or a letter to each unit. You’ll find the sample course planning in the Supplement 1.

ФА Вы говорите по-английски?

А Вы говорите по-английски?
С1 по 6 марта в МОУ СОШ № 11 с углубленным изучением английского языка проходила традиционная неделя английского языка, во время которой блеснули талантами и ученики, и учителя. Можно сказать, что активными участниками стали практически все.
Второклассники устроили «Праздник алфавита» (учитель Финогенова Е. Н.), ученики третьих классов вместе со своими учителями Габараевой М. З. и Тигиевой Г. Н. отправились в «Путешествие в Страну Знаний». Пятиклассники пели свои любимые песни и декламировали стихи на концерте, организованном учителями Котовой Н. А., Гагулаевой И. В. И Тараевой Р. Ш. А вот шестой класс вместе со своей учительницей Жидковой А. М. устроил целый «Карнавал цветов», где было все: и красочные костюмы, и зажигательные танцы и песни, конечно на английском языке. Ученики седьмых классов обсуждали важные экологические проблемы на конференции.»Спасем нашу планету» (учителя Гарбузова . В. И Цховребова К. О.). Среди девятиклассников прошел конкурс «Самый умный», по результатам которого этот почетный титул завоевала Карина Исакова из 9А. Конкурс организовали и провели учителя Кузнецова А. М. и Арчегова С. З. Практически все учителя английского языка провели открытые уроки и мастер-классы с использованием мультимедийных средств обучения, новых педагогических технологий и форм проведения урока иностранного языка. Учащиеся со 2 по 11 класс показали отличные знания по английскому языку, умения хорошо говорить по-английски, знания истории, географии и культуры англоязычных стран. На выставке были продемонстрированы творческие и проектные работы учащихся всех параллелей. А сколько стенгазет выпустили ребята! Здесь и Лондон, и Канада, и Великобритания, и экология, и мировые религии, кроссворды, реклама, фотографии и интервью. Всем нашлось дело по душе, по желанию и по таланту. Руководителем и организатором недели английского языка стала заместитель директора по УВР Апостолиди Е. М.
Хочется поблагодарить всех учащихся и учителей, которые организовали и провели этот замечательный праздник английского языка.
А. М. Кузнецова, учитель
английского языка СОШ № 11,
руководитель МО учителей английского языка