THE PLANNING PARADOX:

The planning paradox states that it makes no sense to go into any situation without having
thought about what we are going to do. But at the same time, if we pre-determine what is
going to happen before it has taken place, we may be in danger not only of missing what is
right in front of us, but, more importantly, we may also be closing off avenues of possible
evolution and development. .

I think that the planning paradox has a lot to do with human nature: On one hand, a skillful
and organized teacher should think carefully the different stages of his class, in order to
bring the best to his students; but on the other hand, the students are not animals or
objects. They have their own needs, which are not always the same, and therefore a good
teacher should be well aware of the different instances required by the students in order to
meet their expectationsand needs.

I. PRE- PLANNING:
Jeremy Harmer considers that the PRE- PLANNING stage means:
A stage that teachers go through, either consciously or subconsciously, that happens before
we actually make a plan of what is going to happen in our lesson. This pre- planning stage
is where we gather ideas and material and possible starting-off points. Ideas for pre-
planning can come from a wide variety of sources. We could have come across a good
activity that we would like to use. Perhaps we have seen something on the Internet or
on thetelevision we might have made an informal decision to teach a particular item of
language or just have a vague idea about working on a unit of the course book".
(HARMER, JEREMY: The Practice of E.L.T. 4th Edition. 2007. Pearson/ Longman ).
The question is: Why is pre- planning useful?
I think that pre- planning is the natural, mandatory stage, before the concrete planning. You
need to think first on several ideas, and take decisions about them, and only after that, you
go into the particular planning stage.
Therefore, in my opinion, it is not a matter of usefulness, but a matter of necessity
according to the natural way thoughts of the teacher occur.
3. THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT WHEN
PLANNING:
Before you sit and plan a class, you have to consider the following elements or aspects:
--Aims.
--Age of the students and in which learning stage they are.
--Students needs.
-- Students suggestions and questions previously made.
--Learner styles
--the time available for the class.
--the way this class will connect with the previous and the following teaching session.
(Timetable fit).
--the syllabus for this course, and the character (mandatory or not) it has.
--Potential learner problems and possible solutions.
4. AIMS:
*It is probably the most important element of any plan.
* Aims are the outcomes which all our teaching will try to achieve. The destinations on our
map.
* ACRONYM: "S M A R T":
--specific.
--measurable.
--achievable.
--realistic.
--timed.
A lesson plan should have an aim, and often more than one aim.
5. GUIDES FOR PLANNING A SEQUENCE OF LESSONS. THREADS:
A sequence of lessons means: a PLAN for MUCH LONGER SEQUENCE than just one
lesson. (E.g. a weeks work, a months work, a semesters work, etc).
Sometimes the teachers performs this sequence of lessons for him/herself; some other times it
is required by the educational institution.-
When planning a sequence of lessons there are a number of issues we need to bear in mind:
--How to react in the case unforeseen things happen during the course of a lesson. The idea
that perhaps we will have to re-visit our original series of plans in order to update and
amend them, depending upon what has happened in previous classes.
--The need to set short and long-term goals. Therefore we will propose different challenges to
our students.
-- THREADS:
One way to approach a sequence of lessons is to focus on different thematic content in each
individual lesson; another idea is to approach a theme to carry over for more than one
lesson, or at least to reappear, so that students perceive some overt topic strands as the
course progresses.
--The need to plan (and organize throughout a set of lessons) how language input will be
provided to the students.
-- Activity balance: Activities should be varied: a varied diet of activities.
--Skills balance.
Which threads would I use??
The threads I would use could be the followings:
--History and values arising from the lives of historical personalities.
--Music: what music is and what musical feature we can encounter (instrumental, songs, etc).
--Nature: the need to take care of the environment.
--The story of women (in the case of a course of girls).
--Sightseeing and places to go/ tourism

PRE-PLANNING
As stated in the prior part, this division clarifies pre-planning as the first stating
point. Before making lesson plan, teachers must consider the language levcel of the
students, their educational and cultural background, their likely level of motivation and
their different learning styles. They also need the knowledge of the content and
organization of the syllabus or curriculum they are working with and the requirements of
any exams which the students are working towards.
 To elaborate the pre-planning, this part is divided into four sections revealing
the four planning elements are folllows:
1. Activities
Teacher must consider what students will be doing int he classrooms; make
decissions about activities almost indepedently of what language or skills they have to
teach.
2. Skils
Teachers make a decision about which language skills the students develop and
need to plan exactly how they are going to work with the skills and what sub-skills to
practice
3. Language
Teachers need to decide what languages to introduce and have the students
learn, practice, research or use.
4. Content
Teachers select content which has a good chance of provoking interest and
involvement.
With all of the above features in their mind, teahcers can finally pass all their
thinking through the filter of practical reality, where their knowledge of the classroom
they work in, the equipment they can use, the time they have avaliable, and the
attitude of institution they work in all combine to focus their planning on what they are
actually going to do. Now, this paper is in a position to move from pre-planning to the
plan itself.

THE PLAN
The present allotment serving as the third part of this paper discusses how to
make lesson plan as the main issue revealed in this paper. As mentioned in introduction
in part one, it is divided into four sections. Having done some pre-planning and made
decissions about the kind of lesson the teachers want to teach. They can make the
lesson plan. This may take a number of different forms, depending upon the
circumtances of the lesson and also on their attitude to plannng continuum as described
in the following first section as follows;
1. The planning continuum
Teacher may do all the (vague) pre-planning in their head and make actual decissions
about what to include in the lessons as they hurry along the corridor to class.
Theachers are following a course book and they do exactly what the book says, letting
the book writers, in effect, do their planning for them.
Teachers walk into class with no real idea of what they are doing to do (the so called
jungle path) teachers write formal plans for their classes which detail what they are
going to do and why, perhaps because they are requiered to do so by some authority.
2. Maing a plan
Teachers might proceed the following steps of making a plan from pre-planning to a
final plan:
- Pre-planning beckground: teachers consider the facts that feed into pre-planning
decission
- Pre-planning decision: teachers takes decisions based on the background information.
- The plan: on the basis of pre-planning decissions teachers now make the plan
3. The formal plan
When teachers are to be observed and/or as part of a training scheme of for
reasons of internal quality control, formal plans are sometimes required.
They should contain some or all of the following examples:

- Class description and timetable fit:

They tell the teachers who the students are and what can be expected of them, can give
information about how the group and how individuals in it behave, teachers need to say
where the lesson fits in a sequence of classes (the before and after) and teachers
incluced information about how the class has been feeling and what kind of activities
they have been involved in (e.g. controlled or communicatives, procedures, and timing.
- Lesson aims
They must be specific and directed towardsan outcome to be measured and should
reflect what the teachers hope the students will be able to do. A lesson will often have
more than one aim.
- Activities, procedures, and timing
The main body of a formal plan lists the activities and procedures in the lesson, together
with the times the teachers expect each of them to take. Teachers include the aids they
are going go use and show teh different interactions which will take place in the class.
- Problems and possibilities
A good plan tries to predict potential pitfalls and suggests ways of dealing with him. It
also includes alternatives in case teachers find it necessary to divert from the lesson
sequence they had hoped follow
4. Planning sequemce of lessons
Planning a sequece of lesson is based on the same principles as planning a single
lesson, but there are number of additional issues which need to be paid special attention
to:
- Before and during
Lesson plan is only a proposal of what the teachers hope to achieve but in practice
inforeseen things are likely to happen during the course of a lesson therefore teachers
need revisit it constantly to update it.
- Short and long-term goals
Students need short and long-term goals in order to motivate them. Teachers need to
build for both goals when they plan a sequence of lessons so that they can hope to give
their students a staged progression of succesfully met challenges.
- Thematic strands
It is better for the teachers to carry the themes over more than one lesson, or at least
to reappear, so that students perceive some coherent topic strands as the course
progresses. By doing so both teachers and students can refer backwards and forwards
both in terms of language and also the topics the teachers ask the students to invest
time in considering.
- Language planning:
Teachers decision about how to weave the language through the lesson sequence will be
heavily influenced by the need for a balance of activities
- Activity balance
It is one of the features which will determine the overall level of student involvement in
the course. It will also provide the widest range of experience learning styles of the
students in the class
 The prior part of this paper hs elaborated the was how to make a lesson plan, in
the present part how to use the lesson plan is further described by considering actioan
and reaction and also plans as records and research tools.

USING THE LESSON PLAN

Reffering to the above explanations on the ways how to make lesson plans, this
part examines how to use lesson plans assuming however carefully the teachers plan and
whatever form their plan takes, they still have to use that plan in the classroom and use
their plan as records of learning for refference.
1. Action and Reaction
Teachers proposal for action, transformed into action in the calssroom, is bound
to evoke some sort of student reaaction, they then have to decide how to cope with that
reaction and whether they can continue with their plan or whether they need to modify
it as they go along.
A number of reasons why teachers may need to modify their proposal for action
once a lesson is taking place are as follows:
- Magic moments
Teachers have to recognize them when they come along and then take a judgment about
whether to allow tjem to develop, rather than denying them life because they do not fit
into their plan
- Sensible diversion
Teachers take the opportunity to teach language that has suddenly come up, similarly,
something might occur to them in terms of nection which they suddenly want to develop
on the spot.
- Unforeseen problems
Often crop up teachers plan and cause them to move away from their plan, whether
this is a temporary or permanent state of affairs

2. Plan as records and research tools

Written plans are not just proposals for future action but also records of what has
taken place, if teachers have time to record how they and the students experienced the
lesson, reflecting carefully on successful activities or less successful activities, not only
this will help them to use the same activities again, but it will also lead them to think
about how they teach and consider changes in both activities and approach, lesson
planning in this way allows them to act as their own observers and aids them in their
own development.
The above part has examined how to use lesson plan by considering action and
reaction and plan as records and research tools. In the next part, this paper presents
example of planning, making and using lesson plan.

EXAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN

Subject : Language Arts
Grade : Grade 1
Topic : Words and Actions
Content : Vocabulary Involving Key Classroom words

Goals
Students will be able to identify important objects in the classroom. They will
also be able to understand common directions given to them in the classroom. Students
will be able to ask permission to leave the classroom.
Objectives:
Given a set of pictures of objects in the classroom, the students will match the
picture to the object by placing the picture next to the object. After listening to a
direction given by the teacheer, the students will follow that direction by correctly
completing the action.

Materials:
Oxpord Picture Dictionaries indext cards markers

Introduction :
Through questioning, teacher will establish students prior knowledge of
common directions (please take out a pencil)

Development :
Using the picture dictionary as a reference teacher will model the appropriate
action. Students will use their own dictionaries to follow along. As students become
comfortable, they can model the appropriate actions as they say each word

Practice
Students will repeat the vocabulary after the teacher while looking at the
picrtures, or the actual object. Students will work with a partner asking each other
question about the classroom and giving each other instruction in English

Checking for Understanding

Listen to the children pronounciation the vocabulary. Ask the students to act out
the given instructions (TPR)

Closure
Review the vocabulary words. Assign practice work at home
The above explanation highlights the example of lesson plan. The conclusion of
the issue revealed in this paper comes in the following part as follows: