The most relevant answers about the proposed questions.

How important do you think a lesson plan is to a successful lesson? The teaching planning is essential to achieve the learning objectives in all academic areas because it prioritizes and organizes the pedagogical practices. The lesson plan guide and direct to the teacher during the development of the class. In this sense, they select the competences, skills, and topics to be developed; delimit the learning and teaching purposes; design interesting strategies and activities to produce meaningful learning; create various resources to develop the basic skills; determine assessment strategies to identify the strengths and weaknesses; manage times, environments and teaching materials to develop successful classes. Teachers cannot improvise a class because their work requires a lot of responsibility, and if the educators don’t plan their class, they would lose credibility, respect, and authority over their students and it would cause other problems, for example, indiscipline, apathy and disinterest in decontextualized activities and poor academic performance. Additionally, lesson plan has advantages, these are: (1) A plan can help the teacher think about content, materials, sequencing, timing, and activities. (2) A plan provides security (in the form of a map) in the sometimes unpredictable atmosphere of a classroom. (3) A plan is a log of what has been taught. (4) A plan can help a substitute to smoothly take over a class when the teacher cannot teach.  (5) It benefits students because it takes into account the different backgrounds, interests, learning styles, and abilities of the students in one class. (Purgason, 1991)

What features do you think a lesson plan should include?  The lesson plan should consider: (1) Institution name. (2) Grade and Course. (3) Estimated time. (4) Subject. (5) Central topic.  (6) Skills to be develop. (7) General learning objectives. (8) Specific purposes.  (9)Phase to explore previous knowledge.  (10) Teaching aids and materials to be used.  (11) Teaching strategies and activities. (12) Warm up. (13)Introduction.  (14) Presentation. (15) Practice. (16) Application. (17) Evaluation.

Do you think it is a good idea to strictly follow a lesson plan? Why? On the one hand, we think that is a good idea to strictly follow a lesson plan because it’s important the compliance with established times for each proposed activity in order to develop the academic program of the school year and achieve the defined learning objectives in each class. On the other hand, lesson plans aren’t recipes to strictly follow, Teachers can make modifications or actions they deem appropriate before, during and after class.  The lesson plan should be flexible because during the class can occur unpredicted events: accidents, unexpected guests, difficulties in understanding an activity, students concerns and others. For this reason, educators should create strategies to advance in the planned activities and the achievement of the objectives.

Some people think that lesson plans severely restrict teachers’ creativity. Do you agree? Explain your answer.I disagree with this because teacher can demonstrate their creativity through systematization of their pedagogical practice: lesson plans, educational projects, Journals about their pedagogical activity, teaching sequences or learning resources portfolios. Additionally, it’s relevant that professors share with their colleagues, successful experiences in the classrooms.  Teachers demonstrates their creativity in the designing of innovative resources, in the application of new teaching approaches,  in the planning activities relevant to the student’s interests. These advances are evident through the publication of documents related with the pedagogic experience.