A lesson plan is an essential instrument that serves as a guide, a resource, and a document that reflects the teaching philosophy and, most importantly, the learning objectives of a lesson. It reflects a teacher's beliefs, understanding of, and orientation towards the curriculum, subject, learners, and pedagogy. Hernandez (2007) opines that when English teachers plan their lessons, they also have to take into account several variables to make sure that their lessons are going to be effective. (p.1). These variables include the learner's background, interest, class size, and linguistic competence.

Effective teaching, good class management, and sustained educational advancement depend on fruitful lesson planning. In addition, lesson planning helps teachers with the smooth delivery of the content. At its heart, teaching involves being able to unpack something one knows well to make it accessible to and learnable by someone else, and this can only be done with effective lesson planning. This requires explicit knowledge and skill beyond simple expertise. Being accomplished in a specific domain does not automatically include the capacity to break knowledge of the domain into its core components and transmit this to someone who lacks skill or understanding in said domain. Therefore, EFL instructors must effectively use the time to prepare for the learners, ultimately providing rewarding learning experiences in each lesson.

This presentation is centered around discussing the effectiveness of lesson planning. Areas to be covered include:

• Planning engaging lessons to facilitate learning and implement appropriate teaching strategies and resources,
• organization and time management,
• assessment techniques that can be used to evaluate the learners before and during the lesson.

During this professional learning session, participants will have an opportunity to collaborate——an essential aspect of teaching, learn new teaching strategies, discuss, share their best practices and ask questions.

Fiona Kanemura has been teaching in a variety of contexts for the past 17 years. Before teaching in Japan, she was a high school literacy specialist and social studies teacher. She currently teaches English at Kyushu International University and Shimonoseki City University, and is a doctoral student at Concordia University Chicago. She has a teaching diploma, BED, and an MA. Her areas of interest are curriculum design, teaching methodologies, and motivation.

Reference
Hernández, M.S. (2007). Reliable and Practical Guidelines for Planning an Effective English Lesson. Revista de Fillologia y Linguistica de la Universidad de Costa Rica.

For this presentation, we'll be in our regular venue. In keeping with our chapter policy, all attendees are required to wear a mask whilst at the presentation.
Doors open at 6 pm, the presentation will start around 6:15pm.
Attendance is free for JALT members, 1,000 yen at the door for nonmembers.

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