Reflection on Lesson Plan

A lesson plan is a detail step-by-step guide that emphasize about the teacher’s objectives
for what the students will achieve during the course of the lesson and how they will learn it.
Creating a lesson plan involves setting the objectives, the activities that were going to be used
and how to use the material that were prepared. Lesson plan is main foundation of educational
structure and it is core of education. (Coppola, 2004). Having a good lesson plan is important as
it will help the teacher immensely during their lesson. In this semester, we were exposed to how
to adapt a lesson plan according to our needs. For me, this is very important skill that needed to
be mastered for the teacher trainee before they become a teacher. Lesson planning is an
important process in teacher trainees’ gaining experience since it forces them to reflect on what
to teach, how to teach and how to evaluate (Yildirim, 2003).

We had prepared a lesson plan for Year 2 Topaz which is a good class. The skill that we
wanted develop is the reading skill. For our lesson plan, our objectives are at the end of the
lesson, the pupils would be able to recognize ‘ay’ and ‘ou sounds, pronounce ‘ay’ and ‘ou’ sound
correctly and categorize and underline the ‘ay’ and ‘ou’ sounds in the word cards and worksheets.
This is based on the learning standard which is at 2.1.2 able to recognize and articulate initial,
medial and final sounds in single syllable words within given context: d. (ay), (ou). We prepared
several activities for the pupils of Year 2 Topaz. Firstly we prepared some tongue twister text for
the pupils that contains ‘ay’ and ‘ou’. Perrott (1982) identified four purposes of set induction.
Firstly, it is to make the pupil to pay their attention on what is to be learned by gaining the interest
of students. Secondly, to make moving from old to new materials and linking of the two easier for
the children. Thirdly, providing a structure for the lesson and setting expectations of what will
happen. Lastly to give meaning to a new concept or principle, such as giving examples. By doing
the tongue twister text as the set induction, the pupils would be exposed to words that contain ‘ay’
and ‘ou’ sound and make them aware and focus on what the teacher is going to teach. Moving to
presentation part, we prepared a group activities for the pupils of Year 2 Topaz to ensure that
they understand and could differentiate the difference between those 2 sounds. We prepared
some flashcards that contains ay and ou sound. The teacher will pronounce and then the pupils
will follow the teacher. The teacher then underline the ‘ay’ and ‘ou’ sound in the words. The
teacher then repeat the pronunciation process and then followed by the pupils. This is also called
as drilling process in behaviorism theory. By doing this, it will help students notice the correct form
or pronunciation of a word or phrase. Noticing or consciousness raising of language is an
important stage in developing language competence .This is to give them the knowledge on how
to differentiate those sounds because they are going to use that skill in the next activities. As for
the presentation part, we include a group activity for the pupils. The teacher split them into 6 group
and gave them 3 words. They will have to decide if the words contain ‘ay’ or ‘ou’ sound and then
send 1 representative to paste the words on a mahjong paper according to their category. The
person who is going to be the representative will have to pronounce the word loudly when they
are sticking the words to the mahjong paper. This activity will make them learn to cooperate with
each other and develop their communication skill.

There are several feedback that we received from our friends and lecturer when we
present our lesson plan. One of them is a feedback about our instruction in the practice part. The
instruction is not clear “Split the students into 6 group” and we then change the instruction to “Split
the students into group of 5”. Other than that, the activity that we conduct also could be
improvised. Our lecturer suggested that after the representative stick the word onto the mahjong
paper, the representative will pronounce the word and the correct sound category and the pupils
in the class repeat after him. This way, the lesson would be more effective as all of the pupils in
the class participate instead of just the group. Lastly is about the group dynamic. The task that
we gave is not suitable for the group of 5. Giving 3 words for them to categorize is not enough
and some of the teammate might not be able to participate in the group discussion. To create a
good group activity, we could do 2 things. First is to give more words for them to categorize. For
example, giving 10 words to them so that everybody in the group could contribute or we could
split them into smaller groups or even make it pair work. We adapt our lesson from our senior’s
lesson plan but we had to change several things because her lesson plan is for year 4 student.
So we change the context, activities and use his lesson plan as a guide.

As a conclusion, producing a lesson plan is not a process that could be taken lightly. We
have learned that selecting and adapting a material is not something that is easy. We need to
consider some basic principles in order to get the most effective lesson. Lesson plan is essential
for a teacher as it is the first step in teaching. Without a lesson plan, the teacher might not be able
to handle the class the way he wanted.