It’s been a while since the first observation, and I’m about to embark on the next one – hopefully having learnt something about how I handle these situations, but also about planning viable lessons.
I read over my first post, which was sort of a ‘hot take’, and I still feel that way in parts. I recognised that my plan was over-developed, and realistically didn’t have the space needed to actually achieve what I set out to do. This is something Angela highlighted in her feedback when we spoke about it later, but she also mentioned the lack of development of the activities that supported the aims; there was little scaffolding for the listening, not enough examples for the intonation we were targeting, and not enough time left to properly set up tasks. I realised this at the time. Something we discussed that I hadn’t thought about was my chaotic board work. It was certainly worse than normal, because of the time pressure I put myself under, but it is something I could work on.
Some parts of my first post on this seem a little defensive to me now though. Just like I’m still doing above, oh dear, I attributed a lot of the issues to my poor planning, and the fact that I stuck to it too doggedly at the cost of supporting lesson aims properly. The thing is, I didn’t really resolve to actually become a better planner, only to plan better for the next assessed lesson, and sure enough my planning habits haven’t changed at all. This smacks of a kind of arrogance – the idea that I don’t have to plan because it somehow interferes with my miraculous think-on-your-feet teaching. Looking back, this is complacent at best, and irresponsible at worst.
It is, dare I say it, pretty lazy. If I really scrutinise my motivations for taking the ‘I don’t like to plan so this is hard for me’ line, as opposed to the ‘clearly I don’t plan effectively’ line, its apparent that I didn’t think to challenge an underlying resolution – namely, that I don’t wish to expend the energy actually considering in advance the best way to achieve lesson aims, and how much I should expect to achieve with a particular class in a particular time period – an hour, a week, a month, etc. My whole (short) career I’ve thought that since I can’t reliably plan exactly how it will go, I can justify just thinking of a few ways to help students achieve the target, loosely organising some material, and applying these things as I feel is appropriate at the time. I think this was short-sighted of me.
Angela explained to me how useful a reflective tool planning can be; I was partially on the same page – I mentioned noticing for the first time the potential for developing learning autonomy in an afternoon warmer that I usually do. What I mostly took her to mean though was that the lesson plan I wrote is a useful reflective tool concerning the next time I plan in that format – i.e the next assessed lesson. I now take her meaning more personally. My lesson planning isn’t up to scratch – I think my lessons are fine, but they’re probably not as effective in achieving their aims as they would be if I spent some more time actually structuring them, with timing in mind. Sure, the lesson I taught for this observation would have been different if I wasn’t being observed, as I would have taken it more slowly and explored what was possible more, rather than detrimentally driving for the unachievable. However, I still wouldn’t have planned for it successfully – I’d have failed to achieve what I wanted to, because I didn’t realistically think my aims through.
This is not something to be defensive about, this is something to notice and reflect on: I need to get better at planning. If I’m serious about developing my teaching, it’s an area that can’t be ignored. My disinclination towards it isn’t a reason to avoid it, but an unexamined, irrational and instinctive attitude which needs to be challenged. To do that, I need to start planning in more detail on a day-to-day basis, trying to teach to these plans, and learning from the results. This will take time, but I’ve got a lot of that!
Here’s an attachment of my plan for that lesson, including the materials:
Assessed observation 1-24jfgx1
