Rea, Missouri TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

Lesson plans have been an integral part of my growth as a teacher and I've grown to understand the need for balance in the nature of my plans; namely the balance between too rigid of a plan, and no plan at all. During my undergraduate studies at Providence, many of my professors required us to create extremely tight plans. While these were extremely stressful to adhere to, and in many cases impossible to adhere to because the nature of a classroom, it taught me the importance of carefully considering the content of my lesson, my methods for teaching the content, and the ways I would measure students' comprehension of the material. When I began teaching in university, I relished not having to create a daily lesson plan, instead resting on my semester plan, my syllabus, as my structure. Within the first two classes, I quickly recognized that I was not only disorganized in my sequencing and my questioning, but also in my providing feedback. Without having clear learning objectives I struggled to measure students' success within the classroom. There was too much I could offer them. Without having a specific goal in mind, I found myself trying to address every error and mistake. I was stretched too thin, across a classroom of 20 students, and became frantic. Afterwards, I began structuring my lessons around a few learning objectives at a time. I shared them with the class at the beginning of each lesson, so we could work together to fix these errors during teacher-led activities and during student group work/activities. The value of a flexible lesson plan that includes specific objectives is immense!