How To Plan For Next Term

May 25, 2003

NOW that children are on holiday, teachers have a chance to plan for next term. This means you can make lesson plans and lay strategy for introducing lessons. Holiday time also enables you to reflect on the previous term and correct mistakes and look ahead, writes <b>Edith Buhazi</b>

PLANNING is particularly a strong feature of a good class manager. As a teacher it's important that you have an idea of what you'll teach, why you'll teach it and how you'll teach it.
You cannot teach well unless you plan well ahead of time as the term is about to begin. The following tips will help you be organised for more profitable pupils’ achievements.
l Read and internalise the syllabus, the teacher’s guide and relevant teacher’s and pupil's textbooks.
Other information books may prove helpful. You do not need to read all the details on every lesson at this stage.
These details could be read when you plan individual lessons. Try to find out how the syllabus and the guides are organised.
Try also and understand how the themes and units in the syllabus and the guides are related to the national goals and objectives of primary education.
The preliminary parts of these books are very important. as they may tell you about how topics are organised, which activities and methods are to be used, reference books and teaching-learning aids to be collected, developed and used.
Do some research. Visit a library or other schools and see what menu you can add to your teaching.
l Make a scheme of work. Prior planning puts you at ease when the hectic term full of activities begins.
You are stress free and as a reward your lessons are productive and focused. If the school policy is that you plan collaboratively, have them a rough idea of what you are to teach in the term.
Put your plan on paper ready to discuss it with colleague. Often times I have visited classes where teachers sit on desks marking pupils’ books while children bend their heads on desks.
Bear in mind how many tests you’ll give in the term and according to the topics you have covered. Don’t just test!
l Identify a core of books (readers) for your children. These will motivate children to want to read and majority will read them all before the term ends.
l Pre-visit the field sites where you intend to take children in the course of the term.
l Collect a variety of materials from the environment and start making teaching/learning aids for your class. Teacher made booklets of a collection of poems and rhymes in local language and English could help pupils read and enjoy reading.
Other collections could include coins, feathers, flowers, pictures shells, stamps, seeds.
Reflect on your children’s abilities and interests and identify ways you’ll help them be better learners. Probably remedial exercises to give the weak ones and enrichment exercises to give the bright ones could be though out in advance.
l Think of what you can do differently to be a better practitioner and increase children’s love and interest for and in learning.
Classroom organisation and management need to be planned as well. How will you organise and manage your resources, pupils, time and space for effective teaching and learning.
You could consider putting up a class library and enriching other learning areas like a discovery.

The writer is a Project Officer with the Enhancing UPE in Kampala (EUPEK) project, Aga Khan Foundation

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});