Lesson Planning: A Guide to Teacher Trainees and Teacher Trainers

Abstract

Lesson planning is an essential activity for language teachers in most situations. Trainee teachers and their trainers must be aware of many elements/components that go into the preparation and execution of an effective language lesson plan. The current paper seeks to provide a compact guide for lesson planning, taking into consideration aspects such as lesson plan templates, lesson types, sequencing of activities, use of instruction checking questions (ICQs) and concept checking questions (CCQs), coverage of skills and subskills, provision of feedback, assessment of learning, and follow-up activities. It is hoped that the theoretical and practical inputs provided in this article will help the trainee teachers and the teacher trainers to become productive and efficient professionals at their work. It is also implied that language teachers would benefit immensely from the easy to use toolkit this paper offers. The insights into lesson planning presented in the paper, if employed methodically, could lead to career growth of teachers and enable them to stay up-to-date on key matters related to lesson planning. The trainee teachers will be able to design well-structured lesson plans with varied types of lessons which could be employed in teaching of languages at different levels and contexts.