Steps to plan your lessons (21/09)

Imagine that it is the first day of class and you have to give English classes in fifth year. Obviously, you need to prepare your lessons and materials. But how do we do that? Before starting, we should consider some steps for preparing the unit in advanced. We can not arrive to the class having nothing prepared for teaching or doing.

1. We have to check previous knowledge: according to LOMCE, an initial evaluation is compulsory. We have to do an analysis according to the curricular stage.  We have to adequate contents to our students’ level, so if they do not know comparatives in Spanish they couldn’t learn them in English, or if curriculum don’t include them. Perhaps books' contents are not acquired. in addition, there are not any objectives for our curriculum, so we have to invent them.
2. In this case, we need to check the curriculum for the fifth course. We have to plan an integrated ability. In English we have four blocks of contents (listening, speaking, writing and reading). The concepts that aren not learn in their mother tongue should not been taught in a foreign language, as it is said before. All the teachers have to work together to plan their activities.
3. Set the time: how many lessons should I spend for a topic? There is a difference between the number of lessons and the didactic unit.
4. Plan the didactic unit. Following the content blocks and the evaluative learning standards, or estándares evaluables. For example, we can work two content blocks:

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• Listening: we start with an analysis of the evaluative learning standards. If I have to make use of an advertisement, I can look for it on the Internet or in the book. We have to look for materials for aim that standard, it is one of the most important things for success. It’s a guide. We have to be sure that they understood the activity. We can ask them for filling the blanks, choose the correct option or do a short summary.

By using that kind of exercises we can match two different blocks by following different standards. For example, writing short informative texts about topics that were worked before in class.

• Writing: we should make pupils write a summary of what they listened, so we link both blocks.