Introduction
Lesson plan is an important instrument in teaching-learning
activity. Something to keep in mind, that the basic idea of making or having
lesson plan in any teaching-learning activity is not to complicate teachers,
but to smoothen the teaching-learning activity itself, which will later ease
the teacher’s job. For a real experienced teacher it might be okay to go to a
class without any preparation (i.e. without having lesson plan), but, newbies
do need the lesson plan. Lesson plan is a concrete strategy. If teaching is
analogized onto a war, a performing teacher who has no lesson plan is like a
warrior who goes to a battle with no strategy, just moving forward, no
anticipation prepared, just swap a blade with no clear direction. Those who go
with strategy can still possibly be defeated, so how about those ones with no
plans? The teaching can be so risky war.
The Model
Practically, there is no standard guidance of composing a
lesson plan. It might rather not proper to say ‘my lesson plan model is the
right one’, mine is the best’, and so on. There may be more detailed model but
it is not always the best ones. However, for me, the more detail the lesson
plan is, the easier the teaching-learning activity will be.
To be able to fully understand some explanation below you may
also need to view the samples of lesson plan which you can use to compare of
what is explained. Click here to get some samples of lesson plans which I once
used to teach while I was in OJT (On the Job Training) in MAN Kunir, Blitar.
Resulted from some review of lesson plan models in Indonesia,
I concluded that lesson plan consists of 3 big parts, in which each part may
still consist of some sub-parts. The big parts are (a) header, (b) content,
and (c) doer.
Header
Heading consists of very general information about the
teaching and learning activity. School/institution name, lesson,
grade/semester, competence standard, basic competence, indicators, text type,
aspect, and time allocation are some information that should be included in
this heading part.
More detail discussion:
Text type(s) in language teaching and learning are various.
In a teaching-learning activity, the text type (s) can be those from
genre-based (narrative, recount, report, descriptive, expository, etc.) or
short functional texts (advertisement, announcement, short message, letter,
invitation, schedule, etc.), or the combination of both. For example, in a teaching-learning unit, the
text type(s) exposed might be descriptive text and invitation. Thus, any texts
and activities prepared in the unit must be dealing with those types of texts.
Aspects in a language lesson plan may cover some linguistic
skills, for example writing, speaking, listening, or reading; and linguistic
aspects, for example grammar. There is no limitation of how this aspect in
lesson plan is going to be exposed, thus, if a teacher plan to apply or use
integrated teaching-learning model, it is very possible to fill out, for
example, with ‘listening and speaking’ in the ‘aspect’ column.
As explained above that there is no standard guidance of how
to compose a lesson plan, what is in the header part may be different from a
lesson plan with other ones. For example, I found out that there is also a
lesson plan which put ‘objectives’ in the heading part, while I prefer to place
it the content part. The reason of why I put the ‘objectives’ in the content
part is that what is in the header part should be those very general
information, while ‘objectives’ describes specific information about a
teaching-learning activity in which the ‘objectives’ exposes specific and
detail characteristics of the activities that will be done.
Content
I can say that this is the main part of a lesson plan. This
part begins with introduction which is in the form of ‘objectives’,
‘materials’, and ‘teaching-learning method’. I classify those subs into
introduction because they contain of what to deliver, not a detail planning of
how to deliver itself (which I call ‘the main of content part’). It is then
followed with ‘teaching-learning activities’ and ‘media and sources’ as the
main part. And, closed with ‘assessment’ part which is also very essential and
may involve various knowledge and techniques of language assessment.
More detail discussion:
Materials are so much wide-ranged. In a teaching-learning
unit, a teacher may intend to expose texts (which types are also various),
grammar (e.g. tenses, conditional sentences, etc), language expression (e.g.
asking and giving opinion), vocabulary (e.g. parts of body, animals, etc.), and
so on. What to write in the ‘materials’ part is based on what you are going to
teach. By writing this, it may help you to do a preview of materials which
means you have learned about it first, and you may also review this during
teaching when you think you need to check the sureness or when you forget
about.
‘Teaching-learning method’ covers approach, model, method,
and technique used in teaching-learning activity. Note that some model of
lesson plans may not go into very detail (discussing about the approach, model,
method or technique), and directly expose the specific method used.
If you look at the samples that I attach in this article, you
can see that those lesson plans of mine can be said to have pretty detail
‘teaching-learning activities’ description. What has been in today’s teaching
trend in Indonesia is the creating of charactered-education. Thus, any
teaching-learning activities are necessarily involves the cultural value and
national character, such as team-work, discipline, hard-work, religious,
curiosity, democracy, creative, tolerant, responsibility, etc.
Brown (2003) states that teaching and assessment has been in
a circle in which assessment is a part of teaching which implies that there is
not necessarily to say the importance of assessment in teaching. The
‘assessment’ part of the lesson plans in this article is also detail. It is
divided into process-based assessment and result-based assessment in which some
model of lesson plan may not go that detail. To say, it is true that in
designing and preparing this assessment, wide knowledge of language assessment
or testing may be needed.
Doer
This is where teacher put his/her identity which also
includes the acknowledgment of supervisor.
Conclusion
Lesson plan, with all what in it, is very essential
instrument that may guarantee the success of a teaching. Since there is no
practical standard guidance of how to compose a lesson plan, it is our choice
to consider how we should make a lesson plan. Whatever the model we use, it
should have a basis in which we can explain our choice. Although my experience
is still narrow, I can conclude that the more detail the lesson plan we make,
the easier the teaching-learning activities will be.
All big things come from the detail.
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Click here to download the samples of lessons plans.
References:
H Douglas Brown. Language Assessment: Principles and
Classroom Practices. Longman University. 2003
Picture taken from: magerempowerment.com
