Friday, June 13, 2008

WORKSHOP #6 - Lesson planing management


On April 30th, Mr. Ivan Marcos Ribeiro, a teacher at UFU, lectured about lesson planing. He first asked a question that seems easy to answer but carries a lot of hidden ideas: What is a lesson? I laughed at it when he asked cause I had this superficial view of it. I couldn't see it as deep as he could. But then, as we talked about it, I realized that a class involves much more than the triad student-book-teacher. Mr. Ribeiro made his point by showing us some features classes have. Accordingo to him, classes are an easy to recognize series of teaching and learning activities, which have a particular setting, different from speech activities. These simple definitions of a class's features show a lot about class planing. Mr. Ribeiro also compared classes with several different activities, such as a wedding, a soccer match, climbing a mountain or conducing an orchestra. Then he asked important questions about lesson planing: how long before class do you prepare it? Do you make class notes? What do you write on your notes? I guess these questions were asked only to open our eyes to important aspects of teaching we were unaware of. When we are students learning to be teachers, we sometimes feel insecure before teaching and then we tend to "stick to the book". Answering Mr. Ribeiro's questions and reflecting over his ideas made me realize there is a lot more about teaching and preparing a class than I could ever imagine!

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