102086- Designing Teaching and Learning

Assessment 1
Decisions, Decisions:
The Importance of Lesson Planning in Effective Teaching Practice.
Question:

It is recognised that effective teaching involves planning. When we plan a lesson as

teachers we decide what to teach and how to teach it.

To educate young minds is to shape the future, for it is through the profession of
teaching that all others are created (unknown, n.d.). Thus, at the centre of effective teaching
is making and enforcing good decisions in conjunction with the requirements of the syllabus
as well as addressing the diverse learning needs of students. It is critical for an educator to
continually acknowledge the necessity of student engagement, which reaffirms
Westermans (1991) assertion that teaching is a complex and cognitively demanding
activity (Mutton, Hagger & Burn, 2011, p.399). In order to reach good decisions, teachers
must plan how they will pursue a learning outcome to effect change, which is the
implementation of teaching as praxis rather than power. It is integral that educators develop
the skills to plan effectively, for it is through planning that teachers are able to learn about
teaching and through teaching that they are able to learn about planning (Mutton et al.,
2011, p.413). In keeping with the Australian Curriculum and Professional Standards for
Teachers established by BOSTES, a critical discussion of lesson planning within the KLA
of English will be undertaken. Using a previous lesson plan as data for critique, an
examination of learning outcomes, time management, teaching strategies, resources and
other factors will inform what kinds of decisions educators must make to transform
students approaches to learning.

The national syllabus for students in Australian schools is established by the Board
of Studies, which overseas all learning content, outcomes and subject matter taught and
learned throughout the schooling years. It is the formal means by which teachers practice
their profession, a guide which essentially instructs, you must teach this. What the
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syllabus does not place restrictions on however, is how to teach. Therefore, through critical
planning, teachers must target planning lessons that develop [students] conceptual
understandings necessary for cognitive growth (Jones, Jones & Vermette, 2011, p.847)
without affronting the requirements of the syllabus. Wright (2012) cleverly illustrates this
concept through the use of a footballer analogy:

What does a truly creative footballer do? Does he abandon the offside rule altogether,
or decide that its OK to carry the ball in his hands from time to time? He expresses
his creativity through the rules, not despite them (p.131).

Thus, the decisions teachers make informed by the syllabus are arguably, quite limited,
which highlights that pedagogy without practice is futile. Some of these decisions include
what to teach, the outcomes to be achieved, the skills students must attain by the closure of
the lesson or unit, how to address students with special needs, and knowing which teaching
strategies are most conducive to a creative learning environment.

To ignite a creative and inclusive classroom space, educators should plan lessons
surrounding a network of factors. Consequently, the intellectual processes involved in
lesson planning are of critical importance (Clarke & Pittaway, 2014, p.118). Within a
context of Australian schools, teachers must be open minded and unbiased to the array of
cultures, dis/abilities and experiences that students bring with them to the classroom. Thus,
when organising a lesson, teachers must strongly intend to [plan] activities based on
students unique background experiences in different social and cultural worlds (Beach,
Johnston & Thein, 2015, p.29). While the syllabus and curriculum generally mention the
significance of inclusive learning in diverse classrooms, they do not necessarily instruct
teachers as to how such considerations must be applied to the practice of teaching. The
successful educators solution to this is getting to know [their students] as people with
unique abilities, knowledge, interests, needs and talents (Beach et al., 2015, p.29),
followed by integrating collaborative teaching methods to allow different students to
contribute to the learning of one another, creating a classroom that is interactive and
respectful of differences.

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A Case Study: Learning about Similes.

Demonstrating praxis and engagement in the school environment requires educators

to operate with a sense of purpose in the classroom (Goodwyn, 2011, p.53). A teacher
named Trevor Wright (2012) conducted a lesson for year seven English students to teach
them about the language technique of similes, utilising the poem Timothy Winters by
Charles Clausely to do so. Rather than simply reading the poem with the class, Wright first
drew an egg shape on the whiteboard, labelling it with an arrow, head like an egg. He then
proceeded to ask different students to come to the board, adding different body parts to this
fictional character. They contributed with similes such as eye like the moon and mouth
like a hammock, as shown below.

Wright (2012)

highlights that

this is an

excellent

example of

teaching which

fuses creativity and pedagogy, describing the results of this strategy by stating, we have
discovered [similes] in creating them. We havent just been told it; we know it, because
weve just experienced it (p.21). Thus, a good educator will situate their students as active
participants in the learning process (Jones et al., 2011, p.847), enabling them to more
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efficiently grasp concepts that they otherwise would have struggled with if pedagogy was
taught authoritatively.
Striking a balance between planning fun lessons, such as that noted in the case study
above, combined with the professionalism of the syllabus, is arguably what constitutes a
brilliant teacher who has mastered the art of decision making. A document compiled by
BOSTES called the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (2012) informs the ways
in which educators must apply their pedagogy to practice under the three domains of
teaching: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement.
Broadly speaking, these standards inform decisions such as academic development, the
diverse needs of students, teaching strategies, communication, organising and planning,
classroom management, safety and responsibility, and engagement with the school
community. Because the standards are so specifically organised, there is insufficient space
to describe them all in detail, but the underlying fact is that all thirty-seven components of
the professional teaching standards encourage educators to shift the paradigm (Jones et
al., 2011, p.854). Thus, it is evident that teaching is also about learning, and since learning
is a conscious process gained through teaching (Gregson & Morton, 2008, p.98), this
means that the student-teacher power dynamic must be interchangeable rather than
domineering.

Critical Discussion of a Lesson Plan: Storytelling- What makes a good story?

A reputable lesson plan has been retrieved from the BOSTES website, shown in
Appendix 1. The lesson aims to introduce a Stage 4, Year 7 English class to a module titled
The storyteller and the story (Storytelling, n.d., p.1). Upon critically examining the lesson
plan, a number of decision making issues have been identified, which has resulted in the
inclusion of a revised lesson plan, shown in Appendix 2. Amendments from the original
lesson as well as new inclusions will be highlighted in yellow to demonstrate how these
different decisions will increase the quality of the lesson. Any omissions on the other hand,
will be further explained below. In comparing the differences between both lesson plans, the
immense role that decisions make in shaping the quality of a lesson will be effectively
clarified.

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Conducting a lesson that remains within the requirements of the syllabus and its
learning outcomes while still engaging students, is a challenging process. Hence, producing
lesson plans is an art form. Teachers need to be able to produce lesson plans that will enable
meaningful learning to occur (Clarke & Pittaway, 2014, p.118). In observing the original
lesson plan (Appendix 1), there are five learning outcomes that are to be achieved by the end
of the lesson. At a year 7 level, compacting this many outcomes risks broad rather than deep
understanding, which does not push learners into their true potential, or what Lev Vygotsky
calls the zone of proximal development. Therefore, in the revised lesson plan, two of the five
outcomes have been omitted to be studied in future lessons, remaining with three primary
outcomes which resonate most with the current lesson (Appendix 2). Additionally, the
content load of the original lesson plan is quite extensive, so rather than making the short
cut decision of extending lesson duration, omitting the section under What makes a good
storyteller? (Storytelling, n.d., p.2) is more effective. After making this adjustment, shown in
Appendix 2, the next decision made was that this new lesson would be one hour in duration.
Making such amendments leads to the realisation that planning shapes what students learn,
how they learn it and the pace at which they learn.
Each child in the classroom must be appreciated as a unique individual, equipped with
their own backpack of life experiences that they carry with them and use at all times
(Gregson & Morton, 2008, p.102). Understanding the diverse needs of students is critical for
the effective educator who informs good decisions when preparing a lesson plan to apply this
understanding to their practice. While Jean Piaget categorises adolescents as being in the
formal operational stage of development, teachers will get a better result with learners if
they combine concrete, pictorial and symbolic presentations of material (Clarke & Pittaway,
2014, p.25), which acknowledges that students do not develop physically and mentally at the
same pace. Upon examining the original lesson plan (Appendix 1), a good decision made was
suggesting alternatives for hearing impaired students, which incorporates standard 1.6 in the
BOSTES Australian Professional Standards for Teaching (2012): Strategies to support full
participation of students with disability (p.9).
Another excellent decision made is the inclusion of starting questions, which is an
efficient way to hook students at the beginning of the lesson (Jones et al., p.853). This
application of metalanguage to make language detectable (Gibbons, 2009) is substantial for
teaching English. On the other hand, the original lesson plan (Appendix 1) suggests retelling
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a story in pairs, yet this would increase the likelihood of distraction and disengagement.
Thus, implementing various activities that call upon [students] to become literate in multiple
ways (Boche & Henning, 2015, p.597) was the major goal while reconstructing this lesson
plan. This complies with standards 3.3 and 3.4 of the professional teaching standards by
BOSTES (2012) respectively: Use teaching strategies and Select and use resources
(p.12).

It is quite unmistakable that learning activities are the centrepiece of each lesson
(Clarke & Pittaway, 2014, p.119) which is why visual learning through group work has been
integrated, demonstrated in Appendix 3. Following this activity, collating students ideas into
a top ten list of characteristics will satisfy the list-makers in the classroom and familiarise
students with the convenience of summarising. By omitting the what makes a good
storyteller? (Storytelling, n.d., p.2) section, time is provided to introduce the visual and
structural elements of a story, granting students a more insightful introduction to the world of
narrative. Engaging students through class discussion using age appropriate concrete
resources such as books and movie posters enables them to appreciate texts for all that they
are. This is followed by an introduction to the structural elements of a narrative, first asking
students to recall these elements, positioning them as sharers of knowledge rather than
receivers. After the teachers thorough explanation of elements of a narrative, students will be
given two worksheets stapled together: a short story retrieved from a past year 7 NAPLAN
exam titled Note from the teacher (Appendix 4) and a self-compiled worksheet titled
Planning A Narrative! (Appendix 5). This will bring individual silent work into the
classroom as well as a professional learner-focused standard of teaching that appl[ies]
professional learning and improve[s] student learning (Standard 6.4 in BOSTES, 2012,
p.18).
Students are required to read the short story and locate key elements, placing them
into the appropriate sections of the scaffold provided. Through using Jerome Bruners notion
of scaffolding, teachers engage students in three primary processes of learning: activat[ing]
prior knowledge before reading, help[ing] students make connections while reading, and
solidify[ing] information after reading (Appleman & Graves, 2012 in Boche & Henning,
2015, p.580). Providing this same scaffold to students for homework will ignite their
imagination through freedom to write what they wish, increasing the success of the task
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because it engages with the mind of the learner (Gibbons, 2009). Therefore, in amending the
original lesson plan, the revised lesson plan is undoubtedly more engaging, inclusive and
academically stimulating.

Teaching is not just about developing the learning of students, but developing the
learning of oneself also. Educators must position themselves as lifelong learners who
continually strive to improve their pedagogy and the practice through which they implement
it. Making good decisions when planning lessons is essentially what determines a students
engagement with content both in and out of the classroom, as well as their academic
achievement. Working within the requirements of the Australian syllabus and upholding the
Professional Standards for Teaching while employing different strategies to meet the
diverse needs of students will promise for a more collaborative, open and engaging learning
space. In analysing the data of a previous lesson plan within the KLA of English, the
importance of good decisions to transform student learning has been effectively
demonstrated, and it is through transformation that teaching becomes praxis- the art of
changing the world, one young mind at a time.

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References
Beach, R., Johnston, A., Thein, A.H, & Ebooks Corporation. (2015). Identity-Focused ELA
Teaching A Curriculum Framework for Diverse Learners and Contexts. Florence:
Taylor and Francis.
Boche, B., & Henning, M. (2015). Multimodal Scaffolding in the Secondary English
Classroom Curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(7), 579-590.
BOSTES Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. (2012). Retrieved February 16,
2016 from http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au/publications-policiesresources/publications/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/
Clarke, M., & Pittaway, S. (2014). Marsh's becoming a teacher (6th ed.). Frenchs Forest,
Australia: Pearson.
Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy, and thinking: Learning in the
challenge zone. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Goodwyn, A., & MyiLibrary. (2011). The expert teacher of English. Milton Park, Abingdon,
Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.
Gregson, R., Morton, Allan D, & University of Western Sydney. (2008). 101396, Literacies
for learning (Pearson Education Australia custom book). Frenchs Forest, N.S.W.:
Pearson Education Australia.
Jones, K., Jones, J., & Vermette, P. (2011). Six common lesson planning pitfalls recommendations for novice educators. Education, 131(4), 845-864.
Mutton, T., Hagger, H., & Burn, K. (2011). Learning to plan, planning to learn: The
developing expertise of beginning teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 17(4), 399-416.
Storytelling: what makes a good story? (n.d.). Retrived March 10, 2016 from
http://syllabus.bostes.nsw.edu.au/assets/global/files/english_s4_sampleu2.pdf
Wright, T. (2012). How to be a brilliant English teacher (2nd ed.). Milton Park, Abingdon,
Oxon; New York: Routledge.

Worksheet:
Note from the teacher. (n.d.). Retrieved March 14, 2016 from

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http://www.education.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/1228/ReadingMagazineB_Yr7Ba
nd4.pdf

Appendix

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