We have agreed on the importance of thinking about our students when planning. It is not only contents, skills, and new concepts but also the tools our students need to develop when learning a foreign language. It is essential to think about what students need to learn and not what we want them to learn. Our planning should be engaging and user-friendly, so in this way our students will feel at ease and will be able to follow the lessons in a proper manner.
We cannot forget that that the essence of backward design is asking the following: What kind of instructional approaches, resources and experiences are required to achieve the goals of the desired results we have set?, what are our students’ needs? We are supposed to focus more in learning that in teaching as such.
The author states that a good plan should have two main characteristics; it should be engaging and effective. When we talk about engaging planning, we mean that the design should be provoking, energizing and fascinating for all the students, not for some of them. This is not only related to academic content but also to intellectually compelling and meaningful. It is essential that students enjoy what they do but at the same time centered on big ideas and challenging.
Effective design helps students become more competent and worthy at worthy work, in this way they will go beyond the usual expectations. “The design pays off in substantive, value-added learning…”. In this way students will achieve something of intellectual substance and they will know about it.
I think you are right. Our lesson plans should be user-friendly, effective and engaging at the same time. We cannot assume that any method or approach that claims to be effective will work. What is engaging and effective here, may not work in the same way and will certainly not have the same results either. Teachers must adapt to the circumstances and not the opposite.
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