Education can change any nation's identity. Singapore and Malaysia are the best example of the last half of the twentieth century. Because of education, a nation nourishes her culture-tradition-folklore-economy-religion-local values and so on.
At the same time, she can be internationally powerful one. Unfortunately, Bangladesh may not understand the significance of education properly. As a result, our educational institutions fail to produce skilled hands for economic development.
Here it should also be remarkable that economic development does not mean a short-term development or infrastructural development. It always thinks its strengths and how long the strengths will progress step-by-step.
It is a question how can we get proper education? Please remember it is a team effort of government, teaching institutions (teachers, guardians, managing committee and intellectuals), students, and circumstances. When all these functionalize properly, education then can only achieve its goal. Among these, teachers' role is the most important to enrich the quality education.
Teachers have also different activities, but a lesson plan is one of the worthy variables. So, lesson plan is a must for teachers before and in the class; otherwise, no one can achieve more than 20 per cent of the goal of curriculum.
***Teachers have also different activities, but a lesson plan is one of
the worthy variables. So, lesson plan is a must for teachers before and
in the class; otherwise, no one can achieve more than 20 per cent of the
goal of curriculum.***
Interestingly, at least 95 per cent teachers of our schools, colleges and universities may not have a concrete idea about lesson plan and its complementary aspects. Even we doubt whether they know the importance of having a lesson plan. If so, how will they prepare their lesson plan? Furthermore, they may fail to distinguish between curriculum and syllabus, and lesson plan and learning outcome.
So, what is a lesson? Usually we think a lesson means learning and teaching of/on a particular subject. But a lesson means a unified set of activities that focuses on one teaching objective at a time. The definition clearly notes that a lesson should have objectives and objectives are controlled by some activities. Activities do not indicate only teachers' lectures, taking exams, evaluation of the students and announcing the results.
These are not significant in achieving the goal of education. So, every course has an individual plan to obtain a particular outcome. The outcome is called learning outcome. Questions then arises what the learning outcome and how we achieve the outcome.
Learning outcomes are statements that describe significant and essential learning that learners have achieved, and can reliably demonstrate at the end of a course or program. In other words, learning outcomes identify what the learner will know and be able to do by the end of a course or program.
Spady, an educational researcher who spearheaded the development of outcomes based education, suggests that the ability demonstrate learning is the key point. This demonstration of learning involves a performance of some kind in order to show significant learning, or learning that matters.
He claims that significant content is essential, but that content alone is insufficient as an outcome. Rather, knowledge of content must be manifested through a demonstration process of some kind.
Subsequently, we can claim that one or two written or oral exams are not enough to evaluate students' level. Rather we must make a plan so that we can test them in the individual class because the class can only ensure whether students are able to receive what teachers share or deliver then.
The particular learning outcomes make students confident to take the larger challenges at the end of the course. Rather we should say it should not be teachers target to evaluate a student but they can concentrate what and how much a student learns from a class as well as the course. So, for a proper learning outcome, teachers need a plan day to day class, and that should be called a lesson plan.
A lesson plan is a disciplined and scientific way in which a teacher can cooperate the students and students will change their attitudes after a fruitful receiving. A good lesson plan is an important tool that focuses both the instructor and the learners on the purpose of the lesson and, if carefully constructed and followed, enables learners to efficiently meet their goals.
A teaching objective states what the learners will be able to do at the end of the lesson. Teachers use the information learned through the needs assessment to develop the objectives. For example, if the learners identify "understand written communication from my children's teachers" as a goal, an objective might be "learners will be able to interpret a child's weekly homework form" or "learners will be able to read the notes that their children's teachers send from school."
A lesson plane is a written document that fulfils the following aspects to ensure a meaningful teaching and learning in and outside the class. First, what teachers want to share in the class today and what will be the next.
Second, for sharing the today's topic, how much time teachers need and how much time they allocate to know whether students have received properly what they have delivered that day. Third, what objectives teachers have set for today's class and what techniques they are going use to ensure the objectives.
Forth, what materials teachers have prepared to use for today's class. Five, what assessment tools teachers are going to use to get learning outcomes of that class. Six, whether class is mono-lecture based or interactive.
So, we can repeat the argument to say that lesson planning is a vital component of the teaching learning process. Proper classroom planning will keep teachers organized and on track while teaching, thus, allowing them to teach more, help students reach objectives more easily and manage less. The better prepared the teacher is, the more likely she/he will be able to handle whatever unexpectedly happens in the lesson.
Lesson planning: a) provides a coherent framework for smooth efficient teaching; b) helps the teacher to be more organized; c) gives a sense of direction in relation to the syllabus' d) helps the teacher to be more confident when delivering the lesson; e) provides a useful basis for future planning; f) helps the teacher to plan lessons which cater for different students; g) is a proof that the teacher has taken a considerable amount of effort in his/her teaching.
In conclusion, we hope that we may successfully present the importance to having a lesson plan of a teacher. Without preparing a lesson plan no teacher should go to the class because that will only spoil the time of the students.
Mohammad JashimUddin is Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Northern University Bangladesh
