planning for learning

Lesson planning is part of the culture of English teaching, and teaching generally. When you are doing your teaching rounds, you might like to ask teachers at your school how they go about planning their lessons. Do English teachers typically have a different approach to planning than teachers in other subject areas? Do experienced teachers continue to plan their lessons, or do they reach a point in their careers when they can simply do it by heart?

Before focusing on how to plan your own lessons, it is useful to read some stories written by experienced teachers that reflect the kinds of planning they do. You will find all these narratives on the STELLA website: www.stella.org.au. These are all listed under ‘Teachers Plan For Effective Learning’, one of the domains of the professional standards that have been developed by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English in partnership with the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association.

Rita Van Haren ‘An Academic Endeavour’

Meredith Maher ‘A Cloze Encounter of the Poetic Kind’

Debbie Potter, ‘Note Taking; One Step at A Time’

Jacky Russell, ‘They Were My Kids, But How Could I Motivate Them?’

Lynne Collidge, ‘Negotiating the Curriculum’

You will also find other narratives on this site that convey a sense of the planning in which experienced teachers engage.

Here are some questions that may enable you to develop your understanding of planning.

What kinds of planning are being described in these stories? What are these teachers trying to achieve?
Where do the teachers appear to get their ideas or inspiration from?
Can you detect any significant differences between the ways these teachers go about planning? How would you explain these differences?
Do these varying approaches towards planning suggest anything about the teachers’ understandings of language and learning?
What principles appear to underpin the planning of these teachers?

You can see that these stories reflect a diverse range of approaches, and these teachers would not necessarily agree with one another about the best way to go about planning for learning. You are not being invited to take any of these stories as reflecting exemplary practice. To the contrary, you may wish to interrogate some of the claims these teachers appear to be making.

Here is another set of questions of a slightly different kind that may prompt critical reflection of this kind:

What do these teachers appear to be saying about their work as English teachers by writing these stories?
If you were to interview these teachers, what questions would you ask them?

Now read the Standards Statement 2.1 ‘Teachers plan for effective learning’ (under ‘Professional Practice’): www.stella.org.au

This statement was prepared by a group of primary and secondary teachers, and is meant to describe the work of ‘accomplished English/Literacy teachers’.

You should also consider the ‘key words’ and ‘focus questions’ that are listed in this domain. See whether these words and questions help you to think about planning.

You should not take the STELLA statement as saying all that needs to be said about ‘planning for effective learning’. Just as with the teachers’ stories, you may wish to interrogate aspects of this statement and question whether it puts emphasis on the right things.



	I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve never really given much thought to the process of writing. I’d get an idea and I’d write about it. Most of the time editorial deadlines drove me to write; I didn’t have much time to reflect on where my ideas came from. However, now that I plan to teach English, and by default writing, I’m beginning to realize that writing doesn’t just happen. Terry Cantwell Monash pre-service teacher (2005)