A well designed lesson plan - One of the keys to success

Just like everything else in life, we are all on a constant journey of learning and enlightenment. As most of us know, and the rest of us will soon find out, learning doesn't just end when you finish high school or graduate from university. On the contrary, the only thing that changes is the way in which we learn; our teachers standing front and centre in the classroom spouting knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb merely shapeshift into a more intangible concept known as 'Experience' and his/her close friend 'Mistakes' (because I guarantee you there are plenty of them for us all to make).

I myself just met the latter in my classroom this morning and it was an eye opening experience and one I thought I'd share with the rest of you.

You see, even as long as I've been teaching in China, I still have lessons I need to learn as well. I know for certain that this wasn't the first lesson I've encountered in my teaching career and it also surely won't be the last. It's learning from these lessons, however, that allow us to improve and be the best that we can be.

Let me first clarify one thing. I haven't been a teacher these past 9 years without lesson planning. I do it all the time, all teachers do (or at least should). For me personally, it's more about creating a sense of structure; having it written down on paper helps make it clearer in my head as well. What I didn't really put much thought into though was exactly how much detail one must put into a plan to ensure an effective and workable lesson aimed at pre-school kids. I'd always thought to myself "Some cute, little 2-3 year olds? How hard can it be to create fun and engaging activities???"

How wrong I was...

The headless elephant in the room

These little guys will no doubt be haunting me while i sleep.

In my time as a teacher I've taught all ages. That is a statement that fills me with a sense of pride. It's also a statement that has only become true very recently with me taking up a part time pre-school job three mornings a week.

In the time since I started working there I've learned a lot about myself and a lot about teaching to this adorable young age group. It has not all been easy (in fact it's been hellishly hard and fiendishly fatiguing 90% of the time); the importance of getting their attention as well as the ease in which you can lose it; most things that you expect to work out well actually ended up failing spectacularly and; who'd have thought that tiny, little people would be so hard to control???.

​That's not to say that I don't like the job; the kids are a veritable joy to be around. It just means that I face a plethora of new lessons on an almost daily basis. My most recent lesson here centers around elephants.

As simple as 'CTRL+X' and 'CTRL+V'

The evening before my amazing 'Cut and Paste Elephant' class (not my idea by the way but something I got from a very, VERY handy website called www.education.com). A pretty simple lesson; the children had to first cut out the individual elephant parts before then gluing them onto a piece of paper, ideally so that they resembled an actual elephant and not something from the deep, dark abyss. I was excited by the prospects of the following day and the fun that would be had by all...

...until I got there...

...and jumped straight in at the deep end, expecting them to cut around noses and tails, as opposed to cutting them off entirely (which I think one kid almost accomplished within seconds of receiving his child safety scissors). It was amid all this craziness that I said to myself "Probably should have checked they could cut first eh?". What ensued was a good 30 minutes of trying to teach them how to hold scissors and then get them to practice cutting up scraps of paper first. Time was running out however with snack time rearing its tasty, apple shaped head. So like any teacher would have done in this situation...

​I ended up sitting in the corner, cutting up and preparing all the elephant pieces whilst they chowed on apple slices. Not my finest hour but it did lead to a much smoother second half of class. To my delight they were professionals when it came to the art of the glue stick. We managed to attach all the pieces together with minimum help from the assistants and had a collection of 4 very fine looking elephants in no time flat. The children were delighted with the end results and, likewise, so was I.

They were much more capable gluers then they were cutters.

The moral of the story

Lesson plan, lesson plan, lesson plan.

​With an age group as young as the one I currently teach I've got to constantly ask myself 'Can they do this?', 'What things could possibly go wrong when they attempt this?', 'What do I do if things go wrong after they've failed in their attempt at this?'. When I plan my classes I need to look at every step and gauge how difficult I think it will be for them to accomplish. If it's likely too difficult then I need to include a set of simpler steps in my plan before we jump straight in. I also need to adapt to the different needs and personalities of my students; some are more capable than others, some lose focus easier. It's not just planning what you will teach that counts but also how you will teach it.

Lesson planning isn't necessarily just planning separate blocks, or classes. Certain skills need to be slowly taught over the course of a few days or weeks. I'm sure my kids could manage the cutting elements of this class if I'd just provided the opportunity to learn how through a series of simple yet increasingly difficult classes.

​These ideas are not just limited to pre-school children either, the same can be said for students of all ages. The act of cutting scissors for a 2 year old and the act of preparing a speech in English for a 15 year old are identical in that they must progress slowly in well laid out steps and over the course of well planned out classes. Only then can they be successful and only then can you be successful through their success.

TL;DR

A well designed plan is your lifeline in the classroom. Don't ever take it for granted, no matter how experienced you are. Now have a look at some wonderfully designed elephants: