Introduction of Lesson Planning

Generally, the term Lesson planning refers to the plan for teaching. It is a systematic plan for teaching and preparation of the teacher before entering into the classroom. Harmer (1991) says that the lesson plan is the art of mixing techniques, activities and materials in such a way that an ideal balance is created for the class (p. 259).  A good lesson has two general principles as variety and flexibility. He further explains that variety means involving students in a number of different types of activity and where possible introducing them to a wide selection of materials. Similarly, according to Bhattarai (1986), “lesson plan is the teachers’ preparation of a particular teaching item to guide his pupils towards achieving a determined objective of language skill within a short class period” (p. 193). It enables the teachers to learn to organize and facilitate the learners in the classroom. Therefore, lesson plan is a plan which is planned for the classroom in such a way that helps the teachers to have balance in their teaching.

Ur (1991) says that various lesson, in addition being more interesting and pleasant for both teachers and learners is likely to endow for a wider range of learning style and strategies and may delay onset of fatigue by providing regular refreshing changes in the type of mental of physical activity demanded.

Components of a lesson plan

Rai (2002) says that lesson plan includes as many as twelve and as few as four. The most common among them are; teaching item, objectives, teaching materials, revision and warming up, presentation, practice activities and evaluation.

Generally the components of the lesson plan are:

Teaching items

Specific objectives

Instructional materials

Teaching learning activities

Evaluation

Homework

Importance of Lesson Planning for Language Teachers

Kitzlik (2008) states that lesson planning allow the teachers to explore multiple aspects of pedagogical content knowledge. While developing lesson plans, teachers get opportunities to think deeply about the subject matter, including the way the subject matter is represented in particular textbooks or in such aspects of the curriculum as standards and benchmarks. They also get enough time to develop pedagogical activities or methods that facilitate students to understand the subject matter. Finally, the teachers who develop lesson plan can contemplate what students know and how they may best understand the content. And then facilitate the students learning in different way according to the context and situation.

Doff (1988) thinks that writing a lesson plan aids the teachers to prepare the lesson; it helps them decide exactly what they will do and how they will do it. He also further explains that there is no ‘correct’ way to write a lesson plan, although a good lesson plan should give a clear picture of what the teacher intends to do in the lesson. The teachers write the lesson plan in the way they like. Therefore, the lesson plan lets the teachers know what kind of subject matter or content are they going to do and how they are going to do or what kind of activities they are going to use in the classroom to facilitate the students learning in the classroom. Without the lesson plan, there is less chance of teaching effectively and there is less chance of aiding the students in learning systematically.

Woodward (2001) focusing on the importance of a good lesson plan suggesting the following points:

a. Thinking things through before you teach helps to reduce feelings of uncertainty or panic and inspires you instead with a sense of confident and clarity.

b. It can inspire confidence in students who pick up a feeling of purpose, progression and coherence.

c. It helps you to understand what research you need to do.

d. It reminds you to marshal materials beforehand, and makes it easier for you to organize the time and activity flow in classed.

e. If at least some of the planning is shared with students, they too will be able to gather their thoughts before class.

f.Plans can be used in lessons to get things started, and prompt memory, and can help us to answer student questions.

g. Working on planning after lessons, as well as before, ensures that the class you are teaching gets a balanced mixture of different kinds of materials, content and interaction types throughout the course.

h. Lesson planning helps you to develop a personal style (p. 181)

Similarly, Stephens and Crawley (1994) says, “Lesson plans require teachers to plan, teach and assess the effectiveness of lessons, and have defined this requirement explicitly” (p. 52).  The further stated that lesson plans are useful to co-ordinate and teach courses of learning in

an engaging effective and appropriate manner, supported by selected resources including

information technology.

The Necessity of detailed Lesson Planning

Harmer (1991) explains, “Most experienced teachers do not write down what they are going to do in a detailed way” (p. 268). He further said that the detailed plan is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, the inexperienced teacher needs a clear framework of reference for the task of planning, and secondly the form of the plan forces the teacher to consider aspects of planning that are considered desirable.

Woodward (2001) describes that although you can make your lesson notes mentally, many teachers, whether novice or experienced do write them down. The act of writing or typing helps many to organize their thinking. The physical act and the slight of the page mean that you’ve usually partly memorized your lesson steps by the time you’ve finished writing. If you are a novice teacher, doing this a few times with the same instructional sequences will help you to remember them. Clarifying your thoughts by writing them down means students are less likely to get confusing or incoherent messages.

Rai (2002) states that that every teacher needs some kind of lesson plan: it may be detailed in case of new teachers, it may be just some points in case of the experienced one; it may not be in black and white in case of some genius teacher.

Butt (2003) opines that experienced teachers who know their students well, who have built a rapport with them over time and who have a good understanding of the resources in their subject department may give the impression that they can successfully teach lesson that have barely been planned at all.

Pokhrel (2006) has expressed that many experienced teachers often reduce lesson plans to a mental map or short outline. On the other hand, new teachers usually find detailed lesson plans to be indispensable. He further presented that all details should be written down to assist the smooth delivery of the content. The extent of the detail will vary depending on the number of years of experience that the teacher has and the number of times he/she has taught the lesson.

Objectives of the study

The main objective of the study is to find out whether the prepared lesson plan is implemented in the real classroom situation or not. However, the study had the following specific objectives:

a. To find out whether teachers can implement their prepared lesson plan or not.

b. To find out the factors affecting in implementing in their classroom.

3.1 Participants
Six English teachers of six private schools were involved in this study.  We also interviewed and did observe their classes to see whether the teachers implement their lesson plans effectively in the classroom. Therefore we had several times of discussion about the ways of implementing the lesson plan in the classroom.

3.2 Methods of Data Collection
The methods of data collection in this study included classroom observations, and the pos-teaching interview with the teacher. We decided to focus the observation on classroom activity and instructional structure because these aspects were what the teacher was concerned for the implementation of the lesson plan. We decided to videotape the class because this would enable us easily to go back to the data we wanted. Also, we were afraid that our presence might have an inhibiting influence on the existing patterns of classroom interaction. But there was no such situation.

Data Collection Techniques

In order to gather data, we used the following techniques;

Interview

To collect information, we interview the teachers to know about their preparation of lesson plan and its implication in the classroom to enable the learner’s in learning process. “The puropose of interviewing is to find out what is in or on someone else’s mind. The purpose of open-ended interviewing not to put things in someone’s mind but to access the perspectives of the person being interviewed”(Patton, 1990 as cited in Best & Kahn, 1999, p. 199). It is simply a device of gathering inforamtion form the participants.

Interviews are particularly useful for gathering the story behind the participant’s experiences. We chose the in-depth interview by which we tried to take hold of the subjective facts of the participants as Siverman (2000) states that the choice of the open-ended interview as the gold-standard of quantitative research is widely spread (as cited in Richards, 2003, p. 47). So, we used open ended questions which allowed the participants express and share their ideas and perceptions with the greater flexibility on Lesson plan and its implication.

Classroom Observation

Observation is another technique which we used to collect data. “Observation offers a researcher or an investigator the opportunity to gather “live” data from naturally occurring social situations; researcher can look directly at what is taking place in situ rather than relying on second hand accounts. It has potential to yield more valid or authentic data” (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 396). Thus the research can look directly at what is taking place in situ and collect more valid and authentic data from the direct observation in the field.

Therefore, to understand the context of events or situation we went to schools to observe the participants and tried to discover things that participants might not freely talk about in interview situations to move beyond perceptions based on data and to access personal knowledge of the participants. It enables the researcher to enter and understand the real situation that is being described. We interpreted the reality on what we saw and what the participants said. Denzin and Lincoln (2005) states that qualitative observation is fundamentally naturalistic in essence, it occurs in the natural context of occurrence, among the actors who would naturally be participating in the interaction and follow the natural stream of everyday life. Therefore, to explore the reality, we observed the English teachers classes in the natural setting and took information in descriptive form in the field.

Findings and conclusion

Based on the information generated from the interview and observation it was found that the lesson plan is implemented in the class but not exact it is developed. As one of the teachers has said in interview that it is implemented 50% sometimes and about 90% sometimes which helps us to say that if teachers prepare lesson plan, it is implemented and it enables the teachers to save the time. Regarding the hindrances in implementation of the lesson is that sometimes the teachers fail to implement completely the prepared plan which she or he has to deal with it in the next class as well. Because of this, the teachers fail to implement another lesson plan for the next effectively as planned. The levels of the students sometimes create difficulty in implementing the lesson plan. Similarly, the current issues happening in the context of surrounding. For example, as one of the teachers has said that she was unable to implement her lesson plan in the classroom as the students were curious to talk about the earthquake that occurred the previous night. She tried to convince the students to focus on their study of the subject matter but they were not ready to give attention towards their teachers teaching. Therefore, she happened to ask the students to write an essay on the same topic earthquake and she failed to use her lesson plan on that day.

Similarly, based on the observation of the classroom, it was found that thought the teacher had written some certain objectives and ways to doing activities, however the classroom activities and practice was totally different. For instance, in Pre-observation, the teachers said that she would divide the class into five groups and let the students read poem “The Paper Boat” for discussion. She also further said that she would ask the students to interpret it in their own way. But she did it differently in the real situation. She just asked the students to open the book and started reading poem line by line herself and explained to the students. Later on, when we did post-observation, she tried to explain the reason that the number of the students was large and when she tried to divide the class into group, the students started making noise. Hence, she tried to control the class herself. Therefore, If the teacher try to prepare and use the lesson plan it is possible for implementation in the real classroom though there are some hindrances.