Summary:

Lesson planning is the process of organizing and structuring a lesson to ensure effective teaching and learning. It involves setting educational objectives, designing teaching strategies, and assessing student understanding. The process consists of four key stages:

1- Pre-Planning Stage: The teacher identifies learning objectives, selects relevant content, assesses students’ prior knowledge, and gathers necessary materials.

2- Designing a Lesson Plan: This includes three main components—Introduction (warming up students and presenting objectives), Development (engaging students through various teaching methods), and Conclusion (summarizing key points and encouraging reflection).

3- Post-Planning Stage (Review): The teacher evaluates student understanding through discussions, problem-solving, and assessments to refine future lesson plans.

Effective lesson planning enhances teaching efficiency, ensures structured learning, and improves student comprehension.

Lesson Planning: Process and Importance of Pre-Planning for teachers:

What is lesson planning?

Before starting any work, it is very important to make a plan for it, so that possible problems can be analyzed in advance and tried to remove them and properly planned to complete the work in an orderly manner. Generally, tasks that are not properly planned end up being lengthy and difficult. A skilled and experienced teacher will never go to class without planning a lesson. Lesson planning means to make a systematic outline of the important points of the lesson to be taught so that it can be taught in a systematic and coordinated manner within the prescribed time and to achieve its teaching objectives.

Clarke and Peterson 1986 in their educational research report on lesson planning wrote that lesson planning is essentially a decision-making ability within teachers. With the help of which they convey the importance and objectives of the lessons taught to the students and for this they try to adopt an efficient and easy method. Lesson planning is a very important part of teaching. It helps to adapt the teaching content and time according to students activities.

Lesson Planning:

Lesson plans are a detailed plan of teaching objectives and activities for a class, it is an integral part of the teaching and learning process. Before starting the teaching, the teacher has to plan the lesson, teaching with planning makes it easy.

Process of Lesson Planning:

In terms of lesson planning, the teacher first has to identify the learning objectives for the class. He then designs the most appropriate learning activities as well as strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. A successful plan includes the following three components:

i- Educational objectives for students.

ii- Teaching or learning activities.

iii- Strategies for assessing student understanding.

The specific learning objectives of the students indicate which teaching and learning activities will be suitable to be carried out in the class. Success in achieving learning objectives is evident from these activities. The following steps are emphasized for detailed lesson planning;

1- Pre-planning Stage:

Before teaching, the teacher has to consider the lesson plan for the particular class. According to the recommendations of the Center of Excellence in Teaching, if a teacher knows the answers to the following questions, he can proceed more effectively.

i- What are my objectives for this class?

What does the teacher want to teach the student? These are his objectives, these objectives are almost the same goals that are set at the time of course planning. These are specific to this group.

ii- What are the objectives for this class?

Objectives are statements of specific goals that are written in character form. It clearly states what the students will be able to do in class, paper or exam after teaching. Along with these objectives, the conditions in which students should learn the content are also defined.

iii- Why this material important?

The teacher also considers the importance of the skill he wants to teach the student.

iv- What content will be covered in the particular class?

A reliance on rational reasoning helps the teacher decide what content needs to be exposed to the students. Or what content should students be familiar with in order to achieve the goals met in the course? Or what content must be taught to give students understanding?

v- What the students already know?

Each student's knowledge is different, the teacher should see what the students already know and what they are capable of doing. By knowing these things, the teacher can make a good decision about where to start the new lesson. And how to help students learn new things?

vi- What materials will be needed?

It is the material that the teacher uses to achieve the goals, planning these things in advance is useful for the teacher to prepare the lesson for teaching.

2- Designing a Lesson Plan:

There are 3 components of lesson plans that most teachers use, these components vary, and not all classes necessarily use all three components, as some plans span two or more classes. These components are as follows.

i- Introduction:

Introduction is a way to warm up or prepare students. Students are given a facility in it and they are told what they are going to learn.

Any of the following steps can be a good star;

• By providing an outline of the activities to be carried out in the class, providing structure helps students to organize their ideas and incorporate new ideas.

• If the concepts presented are similar to the previous lesson, then the summary of the lesson taught earlier is very useful. When students are reminded of old lessons, they are fully prepared to incorporate new concepts and draw new conclusions.

• By presenting a problem related to the topic, and asking the students to develop a list of questions related to it, when the lesson is connected to these questions, the students will begin to see the lesson in the context of their own experiences. This way it becomes easier to understand the subject.

ii- Development:

Development is an important part that describes teaching methods such as lectures, discussions, laboratory and cooperative learning. In this regard the following steps should be implemented.

• Active learning is one of the ways to engage students in the learning process to actively involve students in the learning process. This does not distract the students, rather they develop higher intellectual abilities.

• Try different teaching methods in the class. No single method can be useful for all students, different teaching methods keep students focused on learning.

• Provide opportunities for students to apply teaching skills by applying newly taught concepts, not only does this help students understand the concepts better, but indirectly the teacher assesses student understanding. This assessment explains what students have learned and what further practice they need?

It also shows.

iii- Conclusion:

It is also very important for students to plan how to integrate everything. Presenting the gist of everything to the students, it should be made clear what they have learned and how it will be of use to them. While summarizing the teaching activity, attention should be paid to the following activities.

i- Ask for Question:

The last few minutes are the most suitable for raising questions from the students, through their questions students can clear the confusion arising in their minds.

ii- Summarize the Main Points and explain how they relate to the Course:

Students do not always see things as a whole, but the teacher can make the whole picture clear by connecting classroom activities to the larger course. Thus students get a better grasp of the concepts.

iii- Next Lesson:

If the introduction of the next lesson is presented at the end of the first lesson, the students find out the relationship and connection between different concepts, thus their understanding becomes better.

iv- Recapitulation of important points or a one-minute write-up on the lesson learned:

Finally, during the remaining minute or two, ask the students to take out a sheet of paper and write down the main idea or main points of the lesson being taught and any questions that come to mind without writing their names.

4- The Post-Planning Stage (Review):

Special attention should also be paid to the need for assessment and evaluation in the lesson planning process carried out by the teacher. And it should be seen whether the students have learned all that was being taught to them, and how effective the lesson has been? This assessment and review is not a complex and difficult task, when you ask the class to solve a problem, or to discuss ideas and concepts, the students' reactions can be a good indicator of what the students have learned. Similarly, a one-minute written test or homework is also useful in testing students.