INTRODUCTION

Planning a lesson before teaching is generally considered essential in order to teach an effective lesson and often receives considerable emphasis in teacher-training programs, although teachers vary in the nature of the planning they do and the kinds of information they include in lesson plans. Experienced teachers generally make use of less detailed lesson plans than novice teachers and often teach from a mental plan rather than a detailed written lesson plan (Richards 1998). And lesson plans often differ from the lessons teachers using them actually teach, since there are sometimes good reasons for departing from a lesson plan, depending on the way a lesson proceeds and develops (see Chapter 6). However, lesson planning is an administrative requirement of many schools, and teachers are often required to prepare yearly, term, unit, weekly, and daily lesson plans. As a student teacher you may find that the general framework and content of the course you are teaching has already been planned in some detail by the cooperating teacher. Nevertheless you will generally be required to plan for the lessons that you are going to teach or coteach so it is important to become familiar with the procedures used in lesson planning. The following comments describe student teachers' views on lesson planning: