TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
No one told me
that! 3
I
f the teacher training programme you are involved in delivering
includes a practicum (teaching practice element), it is likely
that your trainees will have to produce formal lesson plans
which form part of the assessment. This begs the question: As
a trainer, how much support should you provide with lesson
planning? In this article, we will consider the trainer’s role during
the planning process, and consider some practical ways in which
we can help to make teaching practice a positive and rewarding
experience both for our trainees and their learners.
Some points to consider
!  Before we go any further, take a few minutes to consider
your responses to the following questions:
1 How much support do you offer your trainees in terms of
lesson planning?
2 How do you discuss a trainee’s lesson plan before the lesson?
3 How many drafts do you look at?
4 When do you expect your trainees to give you their final
lesson plan?
5 How can you focus on making lesson planning
developmental for a trainee teacher?
6 How many areas for development is it appropriate to ask
the trainees to focus on?
7 How can your trainees be encouraged to consider the lesson
from the learners’ point of view, as well as thinking about
their own development?
8 What are you looking for at certain stages of the course
in relation to planning?
9 Is independence important?
10 Should support with planning ease off as the course
progresses?
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In the third instalment of this series aimed
at novice teacher trainers, Beth Davies
and Nicholas Northall share their advice
on assisting trainees with lesson plans.
Thinking carefully about your answers to the above questions
should help you to make decisions about how much support it is
appropriate and realistic to provide in your context – and when
this will be given.
Some suggestions
If you are intending to look at a draft lesson plan, we suggest
you ask for this at least a day before the lesson. On part-time or
online courses, plans can be sent via email or, mainly on
intensive courses, this could involve a face-to-face meeting, for
example during a supervised lesson planning slot. This gives
you a chance to discuss the lesson with the trainee, offer advice
and encouragement, and make any necessary changes well in
advance of the lesson being taught, thereby possibly reducing
the trainees’ stress levels.
We would also suggest that you only look at one draft
lesson plan. Otherwise, this can result in the trainees becoming
very dependent on you, as they feel the need to check every
little change they make. Although some trainees may need
more support than others, not giving them the opportunity to
actually think about their plan before checking with you is, we
feel, detrimental to their progress in the long run.
Even for experienced trainers, it is very difficult to assess a plan
and a lesson effectively at the same time, and this is likely to be
even more challenging for novice trainers. Therefore, we would
recommend that you also insist on your trainees giving you their
final lesson plan in good time before the lesson. This will give you
the chance to go through it carefully in advance of the lesson,
ensuring that you are well prepared for the ensuing observation.
Although it can be difficult (despite best intentions on both
sides, formal teaching qualifications do often lean towards box
ticking), try to get the trainees to consider the lesson from the
learners’ point of view and not just from their own.
Issue 119 • November 2018 49
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
On many teacher training courses, observations are seen
as evaluative. Try to focus on how the trainee could develop as
a teacher (eg by drawing attention to any areas to work on
from previous lessons) and how the planned lesson can
facilitate real learning. Encourage the trainee to think about
their own development: they may want to focus on every
aspect of teaching, whereas it might be better to focus on a
narrower set of criteria, such as one to three areas per lesson.
By not focusing on too many areas, you reduce the cognitive
load placed upon your trainees, possibly allowing them to
make solid progress in one to three areas, rather than making
no real progress in ten suggested areas.
Finally, as the course progresses, you might decide that you
will look for different things in terms of the contents of the
trainees’ lesson plans. At the beginning of a course, you might
only be looking at whether the lesson’s procedure is staged
appropriately and clearly. But as the course progresses, your
focus could widen, as you look at how the trainee has justified
each stage of their lesson to meet their lesson aims. You may
also consider withdrawing the support you offer trainees during
the course, to give them more opportunities to become
independent and less trainer-reliant.
In their excellent book for teacher trainers, Scott
Thornbury and Peter Watkins make some further suggestions
for supporting trainees:
■■ The trainer could simply observe the trainees (either working
on their own or in groups) planning their lessons, and offer
advice only if the trainees seem to need it.
■■ During the earlier stages of a training course, the trainees could
practise their lessons by using the other trainees as learners.
■■ As the course progresses, the trainees simply describe the
stages of their lesson plan to their trainer.
Unsupervised planning
All the suggestions above relate to guided or supervised lesson
planning: that is, when the trainer is available to support the
trainees. However, we think that it is also a good idea to include
‘unsupervised lesson planning’ slots on teacher training courses.
These are timetabled slots on a course in which the trainees are
given time to plan their lessons, but without having a trainer
available. As many training courses can be very intensive,
scheduling time for the trainees to plan their lessons (including
writing the plan, finding relevant materials and practising) goes
some way to reducing the trainees’ stress levels. We feel that
lesson planning (and delivery) especially for novice teachers is
by far the most important part of a teacher training course, so
we sometimes schedule unsupervised lesson planning in place
of more traditional input slots (see ETp Issue 118 for some
advice on planning and delivering input sessions). And, let’s
face it, as teachers, we spend much more time planning lessons
than attending workshops!
Support
Obviously, many of the points above mainly relate to pre-service
qualifications (such as CELTA or TrinityCert), where the trainees
do need a lot of support, rather than courses for experienced
50 Issue 119 • November 2018
trainees who are already able to plan effective lessons, but who
may want to take their teaching to the next stage of development.
If you are working with more experienced teachers, we would
suggest that you consider the trainees’ stage of development and
how much support they actually need. Depending on the required
level of support, all the suggestions we have made in this article
could be selected or adapted. We would suggest, though, that
perhaps the most important piece of advice relevant to working
with experienced trainees would be to manage expectations: that is,
ensure that your trainees know exactly how much support they
will receive and when they will receive it.
t t t
Taking all of the above into consideration, here are what we
consider to be our top tips when it comes to supporting trainees
with their planning:
Do ...
■■ set ground rules at the beginning of the course (deadlines,
amount of support, etc).
■■ ensure you have a copy of the final lesson plan in advance of
the lesson.
■■ encourage the trainees to think about the lesson from the
learners’ point of view.
Don’t ...
■■ expect too much during the early stages of the course.
■■ plan your trainees’ lessons for them.
■■ advise your trainees to make lots of changes to their plan at
the last minute.
We hope you have enjoyed this article, and that you now have
more ideas about helping your trainees prepare their lessons.
Good luck! n
Thornbury, S and Watkins, P The CELTA Course Trainer’s Manual
CUP 2007
Beth Davies is a teacher and teacher trainer,
based at the English Language Teaching
Centre at the University of Sheffield, UK. She
has worked in ELT since 2001 in a variety of
contexts and has an MA in Applied
Linguistics with TESOL.
e.davies@sheffield.ac.uk
Nicholas Northall works at the English
Language Teaching Centre at the University
of Sheffield, UK, where he teaches EAP and
contributes to the centre’s teacher training
programme. He has worked in ELT for almost
20 years.
n.northall@sheffield.ac.uk
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