Teaching as a Practical Guided Aspect: (6 hours)

2. Analysis of teaching as a practical profession aspect

Preparation and planning of lessons
Preparation for a lesson is one of the fundamental concerns for good /effective teachers. It is a
process that involves mental, physical and emotional feelings of a teacher planning to teach.
Teachers are advised to reflect on the process of teaching while before it is done.
Effective lesson implementation depends on the kind of preparation that was done prior actual
lesson but committing oneself to ensure that all the expected and materials needed are in place.
According to Spencer 2003, there are some fundamental questions teachers should ask
themselves before a teaching session.
 Whom am I going to teach?
 What am I going to teach?
 How will I teach it?
 How will I know that learners have understood what has been taught impact?
 In addition one may continue to ask the following:
 What do learners know about the subject content?
 What impact will my lesson have on learners?
 How will the lesson be addressed to?
Preparation and planning depends on the following:
- For one to become an effective teacher one has to prepare and plan. Thus planning is a
vital element in teaching. Effective planning is the basis of successful teaching’
- The only way to achieve educational objectives is through preparation and planning. It
begins with thinking about how you would like your learners to approach their learning
- It also involves what you want them to understand by the end of the lesson.
- Therefore planning is a process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to
achieve desired goals.
- Preparation and Planning (Continuation)
- Curriculum - It describes all contents and educational experiences that are to be
undertaken. Preparation and planning begins from the construction of syllabus,
scheme of work and lesson plan
- Syllabus – (NCDC)-This is an official outline of subject content to be covered by
learners. It describes the scope of the subject content. It can also be described as
the course of work planned to spread over a long period of time. It is usually
extracted from the curriculum the curriculum that is represented in terms of a
number of subjects, which describes all the content that is to be studied per
subject.
- School syllabus/teaching syllabus
- Teachers normally have a course / syllabus that is laid down by the heads of
department. This is normally drawn from the National syllabus. The teaching
syllabus is done to simplify the work of subject teachers. It brings out the logical
order of the content per subject, per term.
- Scheme of work – This is a preparation of the subject teacher. It works as a map
for the teacher. It is a breakdown of concepts into basic components to be learnt in
a lesson so as to cover the syllabus. It indicates a series of lessons that cover the
topic. It forecasts which part of the syllabus will be covered in each lesson.
- Shows references
- Indicates time
- Involves week, period, topic and or subtopic, references, objectives, learning aid,
method remarks
- The lesson plan – A lesson plan is the teacher’s detailed description of the actual
process of instruction for a specific lesson. It is developed daily to by a teacher to
guide class learning
- This is therefore the final product of the process of preparation and planning.
- It is made or drawn in form of a teacher’s guide and a breakdown of the scheme of
work It is a tool that enables the teacher to perform his/her duties in a systematic
and professional manner. It brings out details such as Name of a school, name of a
teacher, time (duration), class to be taught, subject, objectives, content, teaching
aid, references etc.
- A successful lesson plan integrates these key components.
 - Objectives for students learning
- Learning activities - Strategies to achieve students understanding - Introduction,
Body and conclusion Continuation Preparation and planning
Learning activities: The teacher must think and organize the learning activities that are
to be included in a lesson. Any activity is determined by the topic and how much time
you want to spend on each activity. A teacher has to budget his/her time. It is also
important for a teacher to think of how to present the activity and at what time should
some of these activities be introduced.
Teaching aids: These can be textbooks, audial visual, charts etc. They give a direction to
the teacher and provide information to the learner. A teacher must decide on the sequence
in which the learning aids are supposed to be presented.
Introduction:
This is an ‘appetiser’ in a lesson. As the lesson begins, it’s essential to place a brief yet
descriptive introduction about what the session will cover. A good practice is to create a catchy
title for each lesson to have an overall understanding of the information they will be receiving. It
is therefore even more important to make the start of the lesson varied, interesting and
motivating so that the students can focus completely on the new topic and move on from the
previous lesson. The success or failure of a presentation is, to a greater extent observed in
the first few minutes of presentation. The introduction may be used to gain students
attention, to motivate, to arouse curiosity etc. A teacher is expected to design the specific
activities he / she want students to understand and apply. One can begin with a question
or activity to gauge students’ knowledge, a story (starter) which should be related to your
topic. Additional information can help you to shape your introduction. When students are
familiar with the topic you will also have a sense of what to focus on.
Just like any other teachers often need a beginning

1. Start with a Video

Everyone loves a good video. Video can be a great way to increase interest or

teach a simple concept before a lesson. One finds it better by asking students to
 watch and wonder about something familiar to the concept being taught. It

helps warm up learners’ minds for the concepts in the lesson.

2. Start with an Object

Another way to get your students wondering about a topic is to show them

objects related to the content. Ready to do some creative. Inspire them with

sensory objects. Getting ready to read a book? Show them objects from the

book and ask them to make connections, predictions, or ask questions. You

could bring in actual objects for students to touch and smell, or simply show a

set of images. This creates an environment that encourages students to be

curious.

3. Start with a Question

Find out what your students already know or think about a topic with a

question. There are so many ways to do this: ask the whole class, encourage

small group discussions, write it on the board and ask students to do a quick

write. This causes a warm up of students for academic discussions. No matter

which method you try, questions are a great way to get your students thinking.

4. Start with Movement

1. This depends on the time a lesson starts such as afternoon, break etc. For this

strategy, you start your lesson with a question, but the twist is that you get

everyone on their feet to answer it. Students are able to sit down when they
 share their answer with the class. Take two minutes to watch this fun idea and

then give it a try yourself.

5. Start with a Mistake

Make learning from mistakes a natural part of your daily lessons. Next time

you're thinking of starting off your lesson with an idea, consider what could be

learned by sharing student work that's not quite perfect. Take a look a brief on

formative assessment activity and uses it as an opportunity to teach learners to

learn from their mistakes.

2. Class Discussion, Brainstorming, Reviewing the Previous Lesson, preview

Presentation: This is the body of the lesson. Create a condition to enable students to
learn the new content step by step. You should state the principles of teaching (method)
you are going to employ. During this step you should give your learners activity covered in
the previous lesson so as to connect with the new knowledge.
More 2-3 steps can be developed depending on the content and time available. Each step
should be developed with a purpose of exhausting the topic you are dealing with.
Chronological order must be followed in your presentation e. g., activities
Conclusion: You use this step to round off your lesson. The conclusion depends on the
nature of the subject matter. It is an opportunity for a teacher and the students to pull
together some loose ends and put the material covered in the lesson into a capsule. It may
take the form of briefly going through the points of the lesson again with the intention of
summarizing it, drawing out the major points, correcting some mistakes made by
students. This is normally done orally.
Chalk board plan
Every lesson must have a chalk board plan. It entails two things: How you as a teacher
plan to arrange your work on the chalk board and what you plan to write on it. The board
can be divided into small manageable portions. However this depends on how wide it is.
Homework: These may be in form of a written exercise or verbal statement. They are
used as links between lessons.
Evaluation: This provides the teacher with an opportunity to appraise or evaluate the
outcome of the presentation. The teacher notes how well students worked, the quality of
activities used in the lesson, the flow of the lesson. A self -evaluation might include the
following:
Did I state the objectives properly?
Did I allocate time correctly?
Did I arouse and capture the interests of the learners?
Did I succeed in getting maximum attention class participation?
Did I use learning aids effectively?
If I were to teach the lesson again in what ways would I change it?
- Guiding questions
- Qn. a) What challenges would you encounter as you carry out the lesson?
- b) How important is insight learning to a learner?
- c) Unless students learn a teacher has not taught.” To what extent is this
- statement true?
- d) With the current 21st century curriculum explain the performance ofa
- teacher in the classroom environment
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