Change I to The students

Where do we put our focus when preparing a class? Do we focus on what we are going to do – planning our instructions, our comprehension checking questions (CCQs), our handouts, and other elements of our class? Or, do we think about what the students are doing, how they will interact, and how they will complete activities?

In reality, of course, we need to consider both. We need to have an awareness of our own actions as well as plan what, when, and how the students will do things. However, in my experience as a teacher trainer, it’s far more common for teachers to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. To think more about themselves rather than the students, and I think we need to rectify that imbalance.

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To illustrate what I mean, here’s an example of a lesson plan I saw recently.

Context. A teacher training course at a British institution. The teacher had developed a 30-minute lesson for a multilingual class of 16 learners. It was her first year teaching.

1. While students are interacting, monitor their language and note any errors. I’ll give corrective feedback at the end of the session.  
2. Take the register.
3. Start by giving students a picture and ask them to guess the context.
4. Pass a handout around and ask students to read the conversation and check their previous predictions. Then ask the students to listen and fill in the blanks.
5. Ask students to identify the verbs forms, saying “Do you know what tenses are used here?”. Provide examples and CCQs to help students distinguish between 2 tenses. Then ask students to decide the usage of tenses in 2c in the textbook, check and give examples for each usage.
6. Explain how to play Find someone who and pass out a handout. I will ask students to go around the classroom to interview 2 classmates for each question, writing down answers in a table. The students will then report back to the class.

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Here’s a reflection on that example.

Before commenting on the example, I want to recognise that this lesson plan might look very different from the lesson plans you produce in your context with perhaps many years of experience. Let’s try to get beyond the format. Also, let’s try to move past opinions of the lesson content. Of course, that’s really important and something that I discussed with the student, but it’s not the main area of focus for us here. 

Instead, look at the way the lesson is positioned. Who is the at the centre of this lesson plan? The students? The teacher? Can you notice how pretty much each of the numbered points is constructed around what the teacher is doing? What does this tell us about how this trainee teacher conceptualises her role of the classroom? 

A day or two after the class, I met with this student and asked her about this idea of positionality. She reflected that she had been focusing much more on what she was doing in the classroom than what the students were doing. She had thought her class was student centred, but in reality, she was still conceptualising her sessions almost entirely from her point of view.

The discussion continued as we considered ways she could respond to this belief. She came up with a great solution – on her future lesson plans, she decided to start each part of her lesson plan with “the students”. As an example, she worked through the existing plan, adopting this strategy, and something really interesting jumped out. See if you can spot it.

1. The students listen for their name on the register.
2. The students look at a picture and listen to a question from the teacher. They guess the context.
3. The students receive a handout and listen to instructions from the teacher to read a conversation and check their predictions in 2. Then then listen to a text and fill in the blanks.
4. The students listen to a question and say what tense is used in each sentence. They listen to examples and CCQs to help them understand the difference between the 2 tenses.  They then check understanding in the textbook and produce examples of each tense.
5. The students listen to an explanation for the activity Find someone who and get a handout. They interview two classmates for each question, write down the answers in a table, and then report back to the class.
6. The students interact and the teacher monitors for their language errors. The students then listen to corrective feedback at the end of the session.  

What did you notice? Did you see how making a small change in the description of the lesson shows how passive the students are likely to have been? In the original example, it seemed like there was a lot going on and the session was very active. But changing the subject to “the students” shows how it was really only an active session for the teacher, with the students mainly listening or checking, with the exception of the Find someone who activity. But, as we found out in the last newsletter, there are some issues with those activities! 

If we want our classes to be student centred and communicative, we must put ourselves in the shoes of our learners, to see things from their perspective. That change in position will make it really clear where changes are needed. Great advice from this trainee teacher, thanks Ngoc. And, I’m happy to report that she made excellent progress after adopting this strategy!

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Here’s a strategy to help your development.

1. Look through a lesson plan of a class you taught. How is the lesson plan positioned? Have you mostly thought about what you were doing, or did you also consider the students? For a future lesson plan, try starting descriptions with “The students” and see what happens to both the lesson content and your awareness of the learners when you are teaching.

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That’s all for this edition. Happy teaching and let me know what you think and how you get on in the comments on on social media.

Until next time,

Sam