Why are they important?
Let’s explore the importance of this section of the plan by briefly looking
at a couple of scenarios which I very often observe on CELTA teaching
practices.
While reading these scenarios, check if you have had any similar
experiences!
Scenario 1:
The teacher is about to do a listening exercise
with the learners. She has prepared them in an excellent way through a series of
activities. The atmosphere is nice, the learners are engaged with the whole
process and everything is going great!
The teacher sets the listening exercise and
presses the PLAY button; the speakers
do not work properly; the learners cannot hear anything! She then panics and
tells the learners to wait for a couple of minutes! She spends about 8 minutes
trying to fix the speakers. In the end, the learners start chatting away as
they have nothing to do while the teacher is still trying to fix the problem.
She finally gives in and tells the learners
there is not going to be any listening so they might as well do one last
speaking task (which was based on the content of the recording!) and finish the
lesson earlier.
Scenario 2:
The teacher has just presented the difference
between the present perfect simple, i.e.
I have been to China, and the past simple, i.e. I went to China 3 years ago. She used very nice and clear
timelines to show the meaning, etc. When the learners start practising the
tenses through a gap-filling exercise, they produce sentences like the
following:
-
She has buyed a nice pair of shoes.
-
The children have breaked the vase.
The teacher notices the problem and stops the
activity; she then spends the rest of the lesson explaining the difference
between regular vs. irregular verbs and she goes through all of the past
participle forms of all irregular verbs. By the end of the lesson, the learners
are exhausted and bored.
In both scenarios
described above, the CELTA trainee teachers had designed very good plans and
activities to help the learners achieve the lesson aims; however, these aims
were not ultimately achieved and the lessons were not satisfactory.
This could have been
prevented had the teachers anticipated problems related to classroom equipment
and the learners’ background knowledge (or lack thereof) of the language.
How can I come up with a good range of valid problems
then?
Simply go through your plan and imagine what things could destroy the
smooth flow of the lesson!
It would be a good idea to break down these anticipated catastrophes in
separate sections so that you can be sure that you cover all key areas of your lesson.
Let’s look at some examples!
Example 1:
You can divide the anticipated problems in the following
areas as a separate section of your plan.
Anticipated problems related to…
·
classroom equipment and resources
o
…
o
…
·
the learners
o
…
o
…
·
language
o
…
o
…
·
skills
o
…
o
…
|
Example 2:
You can make a note of each
anticipated problem on the procedure
of your lesson as shown below. Let’s take Scenario
2 (gap-filling exercise for the present perfect simple vs. the past simple)
as an example.
Example 3:
You can make a note of the
anticipated problems on the coursebook
page as shown below.
If your director agrees with
your writing on the coursebook, this can be extremely helpful for your
colleagues using the same coursebook!
Ok. I’ve found the main problems!
What do I do next?
Don’t despair! Help is on
the way!
My next post will be about ways
of coming up with suitable and practical solutions to problems like the ones
described in the two scenarios.
Stay tuned!
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