You’ve finished your lesson. Congratulations, It is important to celebrate little steps. Now, you should reflect on the lesson. 

Reflection is important. You can gain valuable insights into what worked well and what didn’t, and can make adjustments to your plan and strategies. This reflective process is critical to continually improve our practice.

In this blog post, I will present the tools I use to reflect on my lessons.

Evaluation Criteria

A list of criteria is a good way to reflect on lessons in a consistent manner.

There are various criterias that can help with your self-evaluation. 

Ur (1996, p. 220) offers the following criteria for evaluating lesson effectiveness and orders them as follows: 

(1) the class seemed to be learning the material well; 

(2) the learners were engaging with the foreign language throughout; 

(3) the learners were attentive all the time; 

(4) the learners enjoyed the lesson and were motivated; 

(5) the learners were active all the time; 

(6) the lesson went according to plan; 

(7) the language was used communicatively throughout.

You might wish to reflect on these criteria and reorder them in your own list of priority. I personally order them this way: 

I also put them in this table to assess the success of the lesson. 

If you mostly answer “yes” then great, you did amazing. Don’t feel discouraged if it’s not the case. We all go through rough lessons and learn from them. Reflect on why things went the way they did so you can replicate or avoid those situations in the future. 

In addition to criteria, you might also use a few questions to guide your reflection.

Reflection Questions

The following questions may also be useful for teachers to reflect on after conducting a lesson:  

• Did you finish the lesson on time?  
• What do you think the students actually learned?  
• What tasks were most successful? Least successful? Why?  
• What changes (if any) will you make in your teaching and why (or why not)?

Your answers can be used as a basis for future lesson planning. In the longer run, these things will become intuitive. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, reflection is a crucial part of lesson planning. It will guide your future planning in directions that you have found to be successful with your students. 

Remember the criteria to guide you in your reflection: 

• The class seemed to be learning the material well
• The learners enjoyed the lesson and were motivated
• The learners were engaging with the foreign language throughout
• The learners were active all the time
• The learners were attentive all the time
• The language was used communicatively throughout
• The lesson went according to plan

Also, the questions to guide your reflection:

• Did you finish the lesson on time?  
• What do you think the students actually learned?  
• What tasks were most successful? Least successful? Why?  
• What changes (if any) will you make in your teaching and why (or why not)?

If you prefer, you might use the questions instead or use them alongside the criteria table. Everyone is on their own personal journey.

Good luck with your future planning ✨

References

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Farrell, T. (2002). Lesson Planning. In J. Richards & W. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice (Cambridge Professional Learning, pp. 30-39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.