Lesson 5: Lesson Planning — Getting our hands dirty

This week we learnt how to translate the theoretical into the practical.

Theoretically, lesson plans should have observable and assessable objectives, employ student-centred learning approaches, and if applicable, use appropriate ICT. (See last week's post.) All this theory is very sensible, but I found that it is actually quite difficult to fit it all together in a coherent lesson plan.

What ICT should I use to re-create which aspect of a student-centred classroom for the purpose of what kind of objective?

The mind gymnastics required is quite daunting.

I admire experienced teachers who can look at a topic and formulate a student-centred, modern, engaging lesson plan in five minutes. It is a certain way of thinking that I must learn, I think; similar to the way I learnt how to "see" the outline of an essay I want to write: "intro, statement, evidence, conclusion" is kinda similar to "objective, pre-activity, activity, post-activity". But I just don't "see" in that way yet.

It helps to brainstorm in a group and to read other groups' lesson plans. Listening to other points of view breaks me out of the insular thinking that I sometimes get trapped in. Prof Tan's particularly pertinent question about whether the ICT we wanted to use aided low-level thinking or high-level thinking shed a lot of light on my thinking. (Out of the window goes my idea for assignment 1, sigh.)

If anything, it is comforting to know that I can only get better; theoretically, that is.