Development And Demonstration Of A Structured Lesson Plan: Enhancing Poetry Instruction

Abstract

The Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) curriculum in Indian universities offers a plethora of experiences to enable prospective teachers to gain mastery over the content designed for their teaching subjects. Talking specifically about Teaching of English as one of the pedagogy subjects, it includes a vast array of topics like the perspectives and objectives of teaching English, planning and implementation of strategies in teaching concepts of English etc. However, the weakness of the curriculum lies in its theoretical overload and prospective teachers remain unsure about the practical application of these skills even after the completion of the B.Ed. course (Suryani et al., 2018; Raina, 2020). To mitigate these challenges, an expert-led Demo lesson on Teaching of Poetry was organized for 36 prospective teachers of the Department of Education, Chitkara University, Panjab, India. This article examines how far an expert-led demo lesson on ‘Teaching of Poetry’ can facilitate the prospective teacher’s training gaining expertise in teaching skill and prepare them for authentic teaching-learning situations. The study followed the mixed method approach to data collection and analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative paradigm. Also, the article outlines a lesson plan for teaching poetry, analyses of the feedback received on the students' comprehension of the various steps of lesson planning and their practical application for enhanced poetry teaching skills post demo session (Avan et al., 2024; Vethamani, 2019). The study is informed by Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, emphasizing learning within the Zone of Proximal Development through guided participation and scaffolded instruction (Vygotsky, 1978). This research adds to teacher training literature by showing how demo lessons conducted by experts act as scaffolds to facilitate the professional learning of pre-service teachers. It offers a potential model for incorporating experiential elements into pedagogy courses that is consistent with national education policy and international standards. Having a formalized poetry lesson plan included also provides pragmatic utility for teachers and curriculum developers.