It takes time to use learning objectives, it should be clarified before students attend the task, what are they going to achieve when they finish the lesson. I always start my class writing the learning objectives on the blackboard, sometimes if I don’t follow one step I have a student remembering it, it’s great!

The learning objectives are really close to teaching objectives (general objective that we’ll achieve in different lessons). Now, the important questions are:

• How are we going to plan our lesson?

•  Which stages will we follow?

In order to answer the first question we can follow any of these approaches: forward, central or backward design.

Let’s move on! What elements do we need to include in a lesson plan? And, which stages will we follow?

Creating a lesson plan looks like time consuming but if you take into account that in order to have effective lessons we need good organisation, good rapport and effective discipline. Thus, good organisation implies preparing classes in advance, let’s do it effective.

Elements of a lesson plan:

• Curriculum aims (teaching objectives)

• Anticipated difficulties (proactive)

• Learning outcomes (learning objectives)

• Assessment and follow up work (scaffolding learning)

• Teacher’s reflexion ( the way to improve)

We can include more elements but remember that we want to be effective and normally in primary we’ll fill five lesson plans per day. The curriculum aims are the teaching objectives where we want to go, moving step by step in order to build our curriculum. Remember that we are proactive, we don’t wait for problems, we think and plan in advance in order to solve these future problems. Learning outcomes are the learning objectives, which goals the learners will achieve. Finally we need to evaluate the process and the product and according to the result develop the follow up work.

After the class work, take five minute to reflect, teacher reflexion is crucial to improve, remember if it works keep it!