Job Discussion Forums

[Austrian]

I'm curious - how much time do you spend on lesson planning per week?
I currently teach 10 Senior 1 and 10 Senior 2 classes, but so far have used my lessons for both of them, as I noticed very little diff. in their oral capabilities. Quite often S1 classes are more enthusiastic and eager to participate.

Am I being (too) lazy?

I frequently read on Dave's that FTs spend so much time on planning their lessons, so what is your real story?

Just if you want to tell - where do you get most of your material from?

45 min. is really short, so this week I planned far too much and had to cut as I did my first lessons ;-(

[lumberjackej]

I spend about 2-3 hours on Thursday for next week's classes, and then maybe 1-2 hours a day revising/improving my lessons for the next day. By Friday my lessons are shiny, sleek, and well-organized. Sucks for my Monday class, the guinea-pig class.

Is that not a lot? In terms of the time you have to point it, this is a really easy job! But is seems you really only plan as much as you want to. A few FT's here are really lazy (and boring teachers), and they rely on the ESL textbooks for the entire lesson. Doable, but not exactly admirable.

EJ

[kev7161]

When you first start teaching, you will always spend a bit more time lesson planning. Once you start repeating your lessons year after year, the planning time becomes much less. I would advise to keep a notebook of your lessons. At the end of the day, write down what went right and what didn't work so well. Next year, you'll have your lessons already spelled out for you and you can adjust them as you see fit.

I actually spend very little time with lesson plans. I do use a textbook/workbook and it takes me about a month to get through a unit. That's from introducting new vocabulary to conducting the lessons to going over workbook assignments to reviewing for the test to the actual exam itself. I see each of my classes 8 to 10 times each month. Then, after the "basics" are done, we step outside the book and do an activity or two, oral presentations or role-playing perhaps.

I probably spend no more than an hour a day prepping for lessons.

[Guest]

I seem to spend more time planning the lessons than actually giving them. In the beginning I took ages to plan my classes and then it became easier. Now it is harder again as I have known these children for so long that they are starting to get bored, so it is now back to the drawing board - so to speak.

I have found some good Games on Daves "cookbook". My children all seem to wish to play games and as long as they are happy and it gets them speaking in English, I do not mind.

I suppose now I spend about 4 - 5 hours each weekend planning the lessons for the next week. I can give the same lesson 8 times or 16 times, depending on how difficult it is.

What never ceases to amaze me is that I can give the same lesson to two Junior One classes and one of them will enjoy it and become involved and the next one will be bored to tears - it is very difficult to please everybody.

[go_ABs]

Last year I taught around 7 classes each week, each an hour and a half long. But there were only two levels involved = only two lesson plans. I spent around 20-40mins planning, plus time for making stuff for the class, since one level was a youngies beginner class. All in all, about two hours a week.

I stole lots of ideas from Dave's Cookbook, Genki English.com and random sites found through a Google search.

This year I don't have a clue... my headmaster is dragging his heels in getting new classes organised. But it seems likely that I'll teach twice as many classes for half as long. Makes lesson planning way easier - a 45 minutes class is damn easy to prepare!

I don't know anyone that spends too much time on lessons - it's certainly not me!

[Austrian]

Thank you for your input. I couldn't agree more with lumberjackej, I planned this week's lessons last Thursday as I had to get the sheets printed. It also had taken me some 2 -3 hours. Today I had 6 classes and as already said I tried too much in my first class and they got better throughout the day.

But what I notice, as I streamline them and obviously improve my explaining part, I then in some better classes suddenly finish sooner then expected. Until the end of the week I tend to get my balance right. Pity they don't switch the classes back to front ever now and then, so Monday's first class could also get the "shiny" ones

And as Rhonda Place says, classes tend to be quite different. Some are rowdier, which means I can do less, some are much more eager to learn and breeze through the stuff. Keeps you on your toes though

I actually had wanted them to only print the copies for my Monday classes, but although I had one of the CET with me, they didn't get the message and just printed the entire lot. I guess I'll work on that part for next week as well.

[7969]

i dont prepare any lesson plans. i read the students book, the particular unit for the week, see what the teachers manual says with respect to how to teach that portion of the book, add any additional notes i might need to help me along, highlight the important points, and go into the class and do it. i only have to give instruction on two parts of the text: speaking in the text and talking in the workbook. seeing groups of 50+ students for 40 minutes a week, leaves little time to go through a formal lesson plan. if something doesnt work, i revise it before the next class.

all in all, i spend about 1.5-2 hours per week getting ready for these lessons. i spend more time than that for an adult class that i teach two times a week however. that's a bit more detailed as the group is smaller and i see them for 4 hours a week.

[Roger]

My first class was English Literature, and I planned every class so thoroughly I spent more time reading up, preparing special introductions to specific issues and digesting my latest frustrations. I veryquickly discovered that students don't work to your plan...
THat's equally true of conversation classes; you always need a fall-back solution ready. Over time I developed ideas that work better than others, and I know my students and their needs better. If you have a lot of oral classes, you will find out what you can recycle.

Those awkward moments when the class is waiting for you to come up with something to fill time - always have some game ready! I seldom need more than half an hour in preparation.

[Songbird]

I teach 18 hours- 7 x 2 hour writing classes and 2 x 2 hour reading classes. I don't spend a lot of time planning the reading, I use the textbook which isn't all that bad (even the students say they enjoy it). I collect their textbooks every so often to check that they are answering q's in class etc and also check their times (how long it takes them to read which I ask them to write down). First time I did this I was shocked at just how much extra reading they are doing in their own time, so I asked them in the next class if they would be interested in reading 1 book together, in small chapter chunks, as a class for homework and discuss the material in class. Instead of groans (more homework!) I was met with much enthusiasm! So I am planning to add this after the May hols.

For writing, because I'm a new teacher and not overly confident yet I still rely on the textbook. I skim the chapter a lot and add my own explanations because it's a bit odd sometimes and try to have a little fun. Then I ask the class to do the exercises which will take a good hour, then either we will discuss answers (maybe as a group, I will pick a random person, or even stick writing on the wall and encourage everyone to talk to each other about how they can improve their writing) or I will collect the work and take it home to mark, which means hours and hours of work (over 200 students)! I do this every 2-3 weeks, but I really want to give individual feedback, I know it's a lot of extra work but I'm here to help them and I need a certain amount of leniency and be prepared to go an extra mile!

My planning for this, along with write ups on big sheets of cardboard for examples etc (we don't have any OHT's, a real pain!) will take about an hour. Unfortunately my first class are the guinea pigs- and by the end of the week the lesson has really improved (oh yes, I repeat the lesson 7 times!)!

[kev7161]

You might try to come up with little 10-minute activities: games, songs, diction practices, interesting picture discussion, etc. These don't have to be scheduled in as part of your lesson. But, if you find yourself finishing a lesson with a few minutes to spare, you can pull out one of these activities.

Here are a couple of my favorites: Have lyrics to a song printed on sheets of paper but have some of the words missing. Play the song on CD and see if the students can fill in the missing words.

Find an unusual picture in a magazine. If you have an overhead, put it on there so all can see it. Otherwise, just pass it around the class. Solicit ideas from the students to guess what is going on in the picture. It's akin to different people's perspective on a work of art. You can also ask them to make up a story (orally) about the picture. One student can start the story then "pass" it on to another student, then another, and so on.

[clarrie]

In short, as long as it takes!

[deezy]

Depends on what type of class it is! If it's one where I use just a coursebook, a 2.5 hour lesson takes me half an hour to plan. Unfortunately most of my classes need supplementary work as I'm teaching corporates and they need some specialist training not in the books, (such as project management terminology, QA terms and approaches, organisational development, etc). Since for these I have to dive around finding the work either out of my personal databank, or the internet, the lesson plans can take a couple of hours.... and then I get asked by my Centre Manager "what have you been doing for the last two hours?". I tell her to follow me around for a day and make notes!

I find that new teachers take much longer to plan their lessons, but after a couple of months it eases off.