By Abdesalam ZOUITA
If a lot of different variables contribute to the building of a successful language lesson, none of these can really be as important as lesson planning A lesson plan in the classroom is as vital to the teacher as a logbook (carnet de bord) is to a driver on a highway. A lesson plan is developed by the teacher OUTSIDE the classroom to guide the teaching that will eventually take place INSIDE that classroom. Planning a lesson Is thus much more difficult than delivering a lesson. Planning is when you look at the curriculum standards and develop lesson content that match those standards. Luckily, textbooks that are adopted for our classrooms are typically written with this in mind. A lot of details are 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. Obviously, a teacher with several years of experience may have plans that are much less detailed than beginning teachers… The English language teaching community usually raises the question as to what extent a qualified teacher may need a lesson plan Or whether a lesson plan is necessary at all!
The obvious and logical answer is an all-capital-letters YES. However qualified, experimented and well-trained a teacher may be, s/he always needs a road map to guide his lesson. That road map is the lesson plan. Obviously not all good lesson plans warrant good lessons, but there can be no good lesson without a good lesson plan.
The lesson plans here suggested by Mr. Zouita are in essence based on Gateway to English 2 textbook for second year baccalaureate. Nonetheless, their use may indeed be extended to the other books in use by the Moroccan (and non-Moroccan) teachers nationwide And since Lesson plans are in principle flexible and usually made to be changed somewhere along the teaching process, Mr. Zouita’s lesson plans can also be a model to follow and an impetus for other teachers who use other textbooks to do a similar work.
The obvious and logical answer is an all-capital-letters YES. However qualified, experimented and well-trained a teacher may be, s/he always needs a road map to guide his lesson. That road map is the lesson plan. Obviously not all good lesson plans warrant good lessons, but there can be no good lesson without a good lesson plan.
The lesson plans here suggested by Mr. Zouita are in essence based on Gateway to English 2 textbook for second year baccalaureate. Nonetheless, their use may indeed be extended to the other books in use by the Moroccan (and non-Moroccan) teachers nationwide And since Lesson plans are in principle flexible and usually made to be changed somewhere along the teaching process, Mr. Zouita’s lesson plans can also be a model to follow and an impetus for other teachers who use other textbooks to do a similar work.
Youssef Najah – English inspector Lâayoune
