Plannning is a step ahead in time and it must include things you can use in case things get out of control. So I think planning means mainly to anticipate problems.
One of my major concerns is to have many options I can use in class, so that my students will not lose their time. But, of course, I dont like the idea that teachers use "plan B" most part of their time.
A good class and a good course have clear objectives that are given straighforwardly, so that students can have in mind what the benefits of that course is going to be for him. That's why i believe that good teachers are the ones that have a global and a micro view of their courses. they are able to design their courses with clear objectives in their minds and separate the objectives of the course from the objetives of the class.
In my point of view, the real reason for the meaning between teaching and learning has to do with the meeting between the objectives of the student and the objectives of the teacher.

Hi guys! My two cents:

Generally speaking, planning means proposing actions in order to achieve your goals. In English teaching, I think it means preparing lessons/activities that enable our students to achive their goals regarding the language.

Planning our lessons should take these into account:
- our students profile (who they are, what they want/need, personal interests if possible etc);
- what we want them to do (we = teachers, school, company etc)
- how much time we have for each activity and for the learning process as a whole (for example, students may take an exam by the end of the year and want to prepare for it);
- what resources we have/will need for each action;
- how the activities - and even the whole course - are going to happen; step by step if possible;
- problems that may occur (based on previous experiences);
- a Plan B;
- (...)

I think I've written too much... I'm not an expert and my experience is short so let me hear from you about my comments... :)

Cheers!

Rogerio Paes Costa
rogeriopaescosta@gmail.com
Yahoo! and Skype ID: rogeriopaescosta

hi everybody
For me planning a course is different from planning individual lessons. Each lesson should have set of objectives that should be achieved by the end of each lesson. All these objectives should make up the whole course objectives. Plannning should be carried out after close examination of the whole process of learnin.
Hala Salih

For me, planning is "our hows to teach the whats to the who " and it differs from one teacher to another and from one situation to another.

Hi everyone!
- To answer thefirst question, I´d say there´s a huge gap betwen getting into the classroom with a plan and without it!I´ve experienced both situations and when I haven´t prepare for the lesson...nothing happens. The students are a mirror of our work!!
- When I plan a lesson I mainly think of time, objectives and studens´needs.
- A good lesson, well I put myself in the side of the students and I want them to be motivating and productive.I want them to enjoy learning.
- A good teacher...someone who really enjoys what s/he does, concerned about what s/he does, someone worried about managing appropriately the teaching-learning process.
- Teaching and learning go hand in hand, they are the two sides of a coin.I can´t think of my work without thinking about the effects it´s going to have in my students.

But this is just my point of view in summary...I´m looking forward to go on reading what you have to say...
I´m greatful to read what you´ve posted so far because I see there´s a progressive sense of teaching in your words.
Cheers!

Hello

Planning means preparing actions in advance time. It includes steps following order, instructions, technical instructions, materials needed, time, objective and goal, etc.

My major concerns in planning of a lesson would be if it is comprehensible and interesting enough for students and if it fulfills the objective of the lesson.

A good lessson or course would need to have interested students, easy to understand materials, it would be uninterupted by external sources, students would increase their abilities and knowledge and feel satisfied about their gains.

Good teachers are able to be comprehensible, they are talented linguists and are patient if need be. Their lessons are interesting, motivating and have a clear achievable goal.

The student wants to aquire knowledge and gain abilities in order to be more successful in life, the teacher wants share the knowledge that he/she has and it is his passion.

Hi everyone! For me planning involves writing down notes about the steps I'll use to help my students achieve our goals in class. I'm a very visual person so I write everything down but not all teachers are the same.
Planning includes thinking about the physical space, the number of students, odd/even numbers, the materials available, where the students are in their learning and where we want to go, the time of day... There are many factors that determine how I will plan a lesson but I think my biggest concern is how to achieve the lesson aims most effectively.
A good lesson should be memorable and fun. The students should walk away believing that they've learned something useful.
Good teachers are extremely versatile. They are dynamic, motivating, well-organized, sympathetic, consistent, open to new ideas... the list is very long but I think that a good teacher is also quite human-centered; they are tuned in to the needs and emotions of others and able to guide a lesson taking those factors into consideration.
I think teaching and learning go hand in hand and for me the difference between the two is often blurred. I learn something new during every single lesson I teach and it's the love of learning that keeps me involved in this profession.

Number 7 is my comment- I'll try to remember to sign them from now on! Micaela

Planning to me means preparing... for all eventualities! It means preparing lessons that take everything into account about your learners, your workspace, your goals/objectives and then having a few tricks in your grab bag just in case.
My major concerns when planning a lesson is that my learners have such different abilities and skill levels it is sometimes hard to make sure the more advanced students aren't bored or the less proficient students confused.
A good course and teacher deliver the necessary material in an inspiring fashion.
Knowledge occurs at the point at which teaching and learning meet.
Gina

Hello everyone,

Planning is to look at the students and see who they really are and not see what institutions or ourselves want to see.

How much students are different and the necessity of touch them do concern me while planning a course.

A good course needs to have a place reserved to the students own planning.
Good teachers listen to their students while planning lessons but also has clear in mind that they are the leaders;so they have to search the students' needs and do work them. Teachers cannot only plan and give complete different classes from their planning.

Thanks,
Cleusa B. C. Sousa

Hi,
Planning a lesson is thinking on how to make the activities in a syllabus meaningful to students. Changes need to be made according to individual and group factors. In my case, I only have the same students for two months. This probably doesn’t help much since getting to know our students can take some time. One of my concerns is to get students to feel that they have gone a step further in their learning process. The other thing is that I want my classes to be totally student-centered. So a lesson plan, in my opinion, is good if it makes students work by discovering new things, solving problems or asking questions. My favorite phrase is: “Give me something to work with. I’ll give you what I know but based on what you are ready to receive”.
Looking forward to reading more of your comments.
Carolina Lapointe

I must admit I don't plan that much. I usually begin by reviewing the previous lesson, reviewing vocabulary or grammar points, then I introduce a new topic, using items that suit the group, such as pictures, proverbs, poems, etc. I follow the course book activities, picking and choosing according to the group's needs and level. I sometimes bring songs, use listening comprehension tapes, flashcards, etc. We have a computer lab at school and I used to bring the groups at least once a week for scavenger hunts, gathering information for literature lessons and projects. However, since the groups are usually large, it's become increasingly difficult to do that, since I can't monitor all the students' activities and they prefer to look for online games (or worse). Nowadays, I assign the information gathering as homework.

My major concerns are to interest as many students as possible, which means I teach less grammar than I used to in previous years, I choose shorter stories and passages that deal with topics that interest teenagers. I'm not always successful, and materials I'd believed were interesting turned out to be boring to them.

A good lesson, in my opinion, is one which helps students remember as much as possible and involves them in as many activities as possible in all the domains: social interaction, reading, presentation, grammar.

I believe the lesson is more effective if the students are involved in tasks and interested in the topics.

Hello intrepid bloggers!
I see features of all my lesson planning in the messages that come before mine. References to time, space, numbers, the students, their needs as perceived by me, carefull planning, possible emergency situations taken care of; these are all things I consider. I also often do work from our course-books myself first, to see what the students are facing. That helps a lot.
My worst planning enemy is the content for 17 weeks of tuition. I try so hard to produce a term-plan, but somehow it never succeeds, although individual lessons are mostly OK.
If anybody has any suggestions on how to crack this one do contact me!
Another enemy is time; we have up to 25 students for 45 or 90 minutes and it is amazing how short that time is. I do plan each exercise on my extended notes, allowing what I feel is an appropriate duration, but it is nevertheless disappointing to see how little one can cover in this time. I don't run out of time, because the time is managed, but everything takes so long. I feel lessons go really fast, so I hope my students feel the same?!
Where do teaching and learning meet? I suppose when there is a relaxed atmosphere, the work is interesting, a willingness to learn/profit/participate is there and a teacher to guide everyone is in class (I avoid the expression 'up front'!)
Mostly all this stuff works for me, but we teachers never stop trying to improve, do we?

Best Wishes
Alison Rostetter

I kind of have the same situation Gina mentions. Since I teach general English in an Institute, then I can have in the same group adolescents and adults with different interests and abilities. Also, adults tend to be more analytical while teenagers like more games and grasp things faster. I’ve tried having extra activities prepared for the more proficient or the ones who finish sooner; some students welcome this, some don’t want more work and tend to slow down their pace to avoid doing extra activities. I wonder if it is me who prepares activities that aren’t interesting enough or who doesn’t see what really interests these students. What generally works is to engage in short conversations with them until the rest of the group finishes. But then, I’m not walking around helping others.
Any suggestions?

Carolina Lapointe

I consider Carolina's question a very interesting one.

"I wonder if it is me who prepares activities that aren’t interesting enough or who doesn’t see what really interests these students".

Motivation is the key word, but I am not really sure where motivation comes from. Interesting activities? ( I am not sure) and besides, Interesting for who?

Don’t you think motivation can come from students' own needs? What I have noticed sometimes is that as long as students are aware of what they are doing, and why they are doing it, and where they are heading to, classes become more interesting as they are more motivated to work. And with respects to the kinds of activities we plan for our classes, I strongly believe, as many of you, that we must plan our classes thinking of our students (age, proficiency level, likes and dislikes, abilities, LEARNING STYLES, etc). Some teachers believe their classes are very successful because all of their students have a great command of the language without noticing that before they started their classes students were proficient enough, so is it worth it to teach students things they already know? What can we do to discover what they don’t know better than needs analysis?
Leticia

To me planning has always been something artificial, I mean the official planning required by school heads with all those educational, linguistic etc. goals. It is a paradox, a carefully-planned lesson very often turns out to be too ambitious for my students. I meet them a few times a week for 90-minute lessons (general English - reading, speaking, grammar; literature and methodology). My way of planning is the so-called jungle path. I have more or less an idea of what I want to do with them in my class and then the lesson develops to meet the needs of my students. My main problem, when roughly planning my lesson, is how to combine teaching my courses with helping my students to learn the What with the How and Why because they are to be English teachers in the future.

Ewa Schramm

Hi everybody,

For me planning is giving myself the chance to focus on teaching and learners during the actual class because everything else is “under control”. Like Alison, I find a lot of my planning in all your comments.
With Hala, I believe it starts with the knowledge of the course and a long term plan to get down to units/lesson planning and finally to class and activity planning. It includes knowing the learners (in terms of needs, wants, strategies, background, etc.) and where to take them as well as knowing the tools and resources I can count on to reach our objectives. I’d also add some milestones to check whether we’re working together towards the same realistic goal.

While planning a lesson, my major concern is what the learners will have actually acquired at the end of it and if I’m optimizing all my resources to reach the whole group.
A good lesson or course needs to have very clear aim and offer a good application of all the learning/teaching aids, without forgetting, as Rogério wrote, the balance between the students’ needs and interests and our (teachers, school, company etc) will. If it’s challenging and daring enough to raise new expectations and lead the learners even further, that’s even better.

Therefore, a good teacher is, imho, the one who knows, feels, cares, wants, loves, embraces the teaching / learning process, who doesn’t think in terms of transferring knowledge but in helping others acquire it.

And that’s why the teacher / learner meeting is so important; teaching and learning are so intricate, blurred (thanks Micaela), they get so much from each other that our classrooms also become pedagogical labs where there’s always room for improvement for both sides.

Looking forward to reading and learning more,

Béatrice H.Alves

What do you understand by planning?
Planning means to have a clear idea of what you want to do in the lesson; to have enough material to fill up the time; to have remembered to review previous material, and introduce new material; to have some games/activity ready to make the lesson engaging; to have things ready so I am not just "lecturing" (BIG BORE!!)


What does planning include?
Planning SHOULD included knowing what the goal is, having some resources at fingertips, and writing it down.

What are your major concerns while planning a lesson?
My major concerns are: that i usually donh't leave myself enough time to thoroughly and methodically plan; that the lesson will be too hard/easy for the students.

What does a lesson or a course need to have in order to be labeled as “good”?
Feel that the objective/goal has been accomplished. Feel that there has been some "worth" from it. Children leave anticipating returning. Children don't want to leave!

What are the characteristics of good teachers?
Engaging, sense of humor, a "performer," care for students.

What is the real reason for the meeting between teaching and learning?
If I understand the question correctly: if a person wants to learn and is highly motivated, he may (may!, not for sure) be able to accomplish this on his own. Some things, however, need a guide/teacher to help along the route.
Children, however, don't even really have the inner motivation, so the teacher must provide both guidance AND motivation.

ok...i also forgot to sign my name...comment no. 18 is mine: Linda

I guess that in mixed-abilities classes you always have to remember that they do have mixed abilities. It seems easy to grasp, but sometimes it is not. Think of expaining grammar, for example. For some students simply speaking English is enough, some others need to hear it in their mother tongue, while yet some others have to see it drawn on the board in a form of a time arrow or even be shown it using a joke for example. Thus, you have to explain the same thing in four different ways. And do not forget that time flies...

Agnieszka Samojłow