Lesson Planning

1. Lesson Planning Universidade veiga de almeida English graduate program Professor sabine mendes (Ms.)

2. Shifts in thinking about pedagogy and classroom management (Wright, 2006) EFFICIENCY – SIGNIFICANT LEARNING ORDER – OPPORTUNITY CONTROL (obedience) – CARE (responsibility)

3. What does a lesson involve? (Penny Ur)

4. Metaphors • Lesson Art Design (Thornbury, 2003) • Lesson schemata, scripts, and images Questionnaire: Metaphors 1 In your opinion, what should a good English class be like? Choose one of the following: a) a story e )a song I) a play b) a symphony f)a poem j )a sonata c) a film g )a football/tennis/basketball match, etc. k) or … ? d a meal h )a dance 2 Why? What does your choice have in common with a good class? For example: (if you chose a football match) 'Because in a good class there's a break. ..'

5. Lesson art design What is it that teachers in training don’t know, or can’t do, which makes lesson planning such a chore? A likely source of difficulty is their lack of a lesson blueprint – that is, an internalized representation of a lesson’s overall shape that acts as an exemplar for the generation of individually-tailored lessons. It has been shown that, when planning, experienced teachers draw on lesson schemata, or mental scripts (Shavelson and Stern 1981), and that these provide a kind of template on which to map lower-order planning decisions. These mental scripts are often conceived in visual terms as lesson images. Westerman (1991: 298), quotes one experienced teacher as saying , when asked to describe his planning decisions: ‘I have a vision. I sort of know exactly how it’s going to go. I’ve imagined what will happen.’ (Thornbury, 2003, p.4)

6. (Moura, 2005) – Lessons and screenplays A community course (Humanist Movement – 2003/2006) – Future Builders. • 6 teachers with very different formation landscapes.: Teacher 1 – teacher’s training at a free course. First experience in the classroom. Teacher 2 - recently graduated in Letras,. Had some experience working with school support (private classes) at home and had a scholarship for Linguistics research. Teacher 3 - Graduate Program (Pós-Graduação) in Applied Linguistics, basic formation in Letras, teaching at a private bilingual school (elementary) and English courses. Teacher 4 – Graduate Program (Pós-Graduação) in English (on going at the time of the research), basic formation in Letras, working at na in-company course. Teacher 5 – civil servant, complete course at a language institute. No previous experience in teaching. Teacher 6 – starting a new college major, he decided to change from Arts to Letras after his experience in the community course. First experience teaching. • 3 coordinators from different “branches” of the course: Coordinator 1 – works at a private technical high school, no higher education. Coordinator 2 – experienced as a volunteer, teaching in different community courses. Unfinished major in Historyr. Coordinator 3 – Majoring in Psychology. Na ex- student from our French course

7. Screenplay concepts – “dead time” • A screenplay is the written form of any audiovisual project (Comparato, 2002) – Lesson plan. • Presented as “parts from the film that the producer cuts, that have no action, that can be disposed of from a commercial point of view”. • Brushing teeth, going to the bathroom. • The questions: “Do you feel it in your class? Do you think they have a function?”

8. Screenplay concepts: Dialogue • Presented as “the way characters are built in a movie. The way sequences of speech are built to tell a story with lines that, many times, do no sound spontaneous” . • The questions: “How do you think about what to say in the classroom? Do you worry about ‘saying beautiful things’ or ‘causing a certain effect’?”.

9. Screenplay concepts: Narrative • Presented as “cinema tricks to tell a story in an interesting way. What makes us want to watch that story”. • Parahyba Mulher Macho (YAMASAKI, 1990) • The questions: “How do you include your student’s narratives in the classroom? How do you value them?”

10. Dead time for the teachers • Three teachers have identified those moments as negative (P1, P3 e P5), two, as something natural (P4 e P6) and one as something negative that can be interesting for the teaching-learning process (P2). • “We get worried about the class dynamics, not having the guy think: ‘What am I doing here?’” (P2). • “When you ask something and nobody answers, that silence prevails. I say something, repeat (what I have just said)... I don´t allow the silence to stay for too long” (P1) • “I try to look for a card up my sleeve not to have a boring class, not to have this kind of free time. But it always happens. It happens, there is no way to prevent it and, when it does, you need to have flexibility” (P3). • “I get ...like...a bit nervous, no, tense, I know that the dead time is happening and I get anxious about not being able to search for interest in those who are not interested. There, I think, there is a lack of resources from our part, because, if we had a bookj, I could ask the student to do an alternative activity, but we have no alternative” (P5). 

11. Dead time for the teachers • “ (If we let) classes be transformed into a megalomaniac, pyrotechnical shows – which is what the courses are – maybe it does not permit the exchange of living knowledge”(P3). • “breathing before going on” (P6). • “moments for reorganizing, getting the material, seting the cellphone’s alarm for the end of the class” (P4) • “It seems to me that when changing subjects teachers have this moment of relaxation” (P6). • “I feel some pressure on the student’s part on the issue of producing always and, then, I have to ‘win the student’ for a reflection. If I do not pay attention I will board on whatever the students want. If he says he wants me to clap my hands tem times, I will clap my hands tem times. Sometimes, because I am tired”.

12. Lesson preparation

13. Varying lesson components

15. Evaluating lesson effectiveness – what is your priority order? 1. c) The class seemed to be learning the material well. 2. g) The learners were engaging with the foreign language throughout. 3. b) The learners were attentive all the time. 4. d) The learners enjoyed the lesson, were motivated. 5. a) The learners were active all the time. 5. e) The lesson went according to plan. 7. f) The language was used communicatively throughout.

16. Lesson Management

17. The format of a lesson plan (Brown, 1998) • Goals • Objectives • Materials and equipment • Procedures (Warm-up, presentation, development, closure) • Evaluation • Extra-class work • Accomodations/Teacher’s Reflexion

18. Study Case 1 An experienced English teacher, working with the communicative approach in a Brazilian public school, is teaching sixth graders (11-12-13 years old). She had only two classes with the group, but already has some pieces of information to guide her next planning. There are thirty students in class and most of them have never studied English before. Those who have some contact with the language seem to be addicted to American songs and like to review lyrics’ translations. One of the students was transferred from another school in which the English classes were more advanced. He seems to be a bit bored with the vocabulary on appearance and personality traits the teacher started presenting. Trying to speak English as much as possible, the teacher observed that the students are resistant to using the language themselves and have some kind of “blockage” to listening comprehension, even when exposed to the simplest of sentences (such as “Are you intelligent?”). She believes this resistance is psychological and related to their fear of committing mistakes in front of their colleagues. Her next goal is to “build her students’ self-esteem regarding language acquisition” and the punctual linguistic objective is to “make students talk about likes and dislikes”.

19. Study Case 2 Tuesday 3 JuneDid another discussion activity - disaster! Changing the way I usually group students didn't work. I wanted to have them mingling, so that I had people who normally don´t speak participating more. But, as usual, Paolo took over and imposed his ideas on the rest of his group. Prin sulked and refused to contribute. Petra and her group mostly stuck to the discussion but kept breaking into mother tongue. Anka and Lotty as usual said very little. What can I do? I feel I am not helping them to use English. I am getting demotivated with this. Today, they were supposed to watch a short scene of “Gossip Girl” and discuss what they understood, presenting their findings to the rest of the class. Thursday 5 JuneReflecting on the problem of discussion work - maybe it isn't a problem of group formations, since trying new groupings didn't work either. Maybe instead it is that students don't know how to discuss topics in groups, as there is a lack of co-operation and not all of them participate. I need to explore this. Today, they were supposed to read the headlines of three top newspapers in the U.S. – all revising the country’s political agenda after Obama’s massive loss – and share opinions on the topic. Friday 6 JuneHad a very useful chat in the staffroom. Joan advised me to look at group roles such as facilitating, encouraging, co-operating, attention seeking, harmonizing etc. Jo suggested a couple of books. I feel more motivated now. Tuesday 17 JuneTried some activities on group roles. I think they worked. I told class we would try out some new ideas for the way we do group work and they seemed receptive to this. Next lesson I will select an observer for each group and give them something to fill in about the actions that take place, eg helping, contributing, arguing etc. Then we'll use this to establish some rules for making discussions more effective and getting everyone to participate.

20. Case study 3 An inexperienced English teacher wants to start presenting more complex texts to his students. He decides to start by Romeo and Juliet, using excerpts from the balcony scene. He believes that being in touch with English literature will encourage his students to learn more vocabulary and “appreciate language’s poetry”. The lesson plan starts by asking the students – who are 15 to 18 years old – about love: “What is their concept of love? Do they believe in it or not? How do they imagine love was seen in the past?”. After that, students have to represent in drawing the concepts they have come up with. Then, the teacher divides the class in groups of three and students have to recognize known words in the Shakespearean excerpts. Only after that, they will start – with the teacher’s assistance – trying to understand the meaning of scenes and, finally, having to order the pieces among themselves. Their last activity would be to write a short scene trying to adapt the text’s reality to the contemporary world.

21. Some other ways of thinking about planning Aline’s story (Allwright &Hanks, 2009:191) “Why am I so irritated that I have to face the 807 group?” • should/must regarding the roles of teachers and students in Exploratory Practice.