Lesson plans as an innovation strategy

When you have been teaching for a long time, lesson plans can seem unnessessary. You know what you have to teach and you can do it with your eyes shut. In some schools the departmental head can insist that you do dayly or weekly lesson planning as a way to make sure that you are teaching what you are supposed to be teaching! In this context lesson plans seem to be a great big pain! So, does lesson planning still have a place in the classroom? 

For our #ispasuperteachers competition we are aiming for lesson plans that inspire. Not just inspire our learners to learn , but also to inspire ourselves and our collegues to be more innovative! Sometimes we also need to challenge ourselves as teachers to come up with new ways to share what we want our learners to master! Sometimes we need to go back to the drawing board and look at the way we have been teaching the same old lesson for the last few years. Do we just use our textbook and wing it, or do we reflect on how we are teaching regularly in order to do it better next year? 

We have to prepare our students for the 21st century, for careers that do not even exist yet. They have be able to navigate the fourth industrial revolution. The future is all about coding and artificial intilligence. This all sounds great, but are we activily teaching to facilitate the skills and values that will help our learners to cope in this technology enriched world? 

This is where thinking about lesson planning can help. Technology will never be able to replace a good teacher, but to be a good teacher we have to make sure that our lessons are future proof, innovative and challenging. Just teaching from the textbook is not good enough anymore! Even if we are on a time challenged schedule!

When we write down what we have to teach in the form of a lesson plan, we can use a critical lens of reflection to see....

• Does my lesson just cover the subject topic's learning objectives or does it stretch my learners' imagination , creativity and teach them to work together to solve future problems? 
• Is my lesson fun? We HAVE TO plan for fun!!
• Did I use technology to do things that actually could have been done better using old methodology or... did technology inspire my learners to interact with each other and the content in a more engaged FUN way? 
• Is my lesson learner centered?
• How can technology assist in learners taking more responsibility for their learning and to be more creative? 
  
  

If we look at lesson plans as a way to bring all of the above into our classrooms, it can be a great strategy for renewal and getting us out of any boring routine we may find ourselves in. So, you can use this competition as a way to explore how lesson planning can bring back your teaching "vuma"! 

(If you have not entered the competition yet, quickly go and do so now! www.ispasuperteachers.co.za) 

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