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wuxi
Joined: 02 Sep 2010
Posts: 36
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 Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:57 pm Post subject: Fast And Easy Lesson Plans |
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| In the past I spent to much time on lesson plans. Lately, I've been showing a lot videos from youku and trying to generate a class discussion from it. Ideally, I like to spend about five miuntes on a lesson plan and turn it into two hours worth of class material. I was just wondering what everyone's favorite fast and easy lesson plan is. |
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lockedinadrawer
Joined: 10 Aug 2011
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| The ones that I professionally create on my own. |
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Lobster
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 2040
Location: Somewhere under the Sea
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| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 4:48 am Post subject: |
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I don't develop lesson plans per se. I develop materials such as handouts, readings and ppts that focus on a variety of topics and specific vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar points. I may download a news article and prepare vocab and comprehension questions. It's quite time consuming, but I can re-use most of them over the years. I don't know who you're teaching, but constantly showing videos and "trying" to discuss them without support materials is pretty weak.
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7969
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 5782
Location: Coastal Guangdong
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| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 5:07 am Post subject: |
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| wuxi wrote: |
| In the past I spent to much time on lesson plans. Lately, I've been showing a lot videos from youku and trying to generate a class discussion from it. Ideally, I like to spend about five miuntes on a lesson plan and turn it into two hours worth of class material. I was just wondering what everyone's favorite fast and easy lesson plan is. |
If you're showing 5-10 mins of a video clip followed by some explanation or discussion that might work, but you can't do that every week and expect good results. You need some variety. If you're showing a half hour or more of video per class then some (including myself) wouldn't consider that teaching but babysitting.
There are hundreds of websites that have good ideas for lesson plans, some have been discussed on this forum in the past. Scan thru the archives if you can't find them on Google.
BTW, time spent on preparing something interesting and useful is a good investment. Lessons can be reused over and over once you get it right. Five minutes is hardly enough time to achieve the goal.
| Lobster wrote: |
| I don't develop lesson plans per se. I develop materials such as handouts, readings and ppts that focus on a variety of topics and specific vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar points. I may download a news article and prepare vocab and comprehension questions. It's quite time consuming, but I can re-use most of them over the years. |
This is pretty much what I do as well. You need to mix things up on a regular basis or boredom sets in fast. |
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dean_a_jones
Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 1151
Location: Wuhan, China
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| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 5:17 am Post subject: Re: Fast And Easy Lesson Plans |
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| wuxi wrote: |
| Ideally, I like to spend about five miuntes on a lesson plan and turn it into two hours worth of class material. I was just wondering what everyone's favorite fast and easy lesson plan is. |
How old are your students, and what do you teach? If building up my own lessons, on the whole I allow for an hour planning for an hour teaching. I don't think it always works out that way, and can often be less. But if I am starting from scratch on a subject I have not got resources for already, that tends to be about right. I teach university students, and courses on subjects such as cultural history and business as well as general oral English (the latter, being the most open and least academic, is certainly the easiest to make lessons for).
However, if you do want something quick and simple on the odd occasion I tend to find that debates and discussions based around recordings, newspaper articles, video clips etc. can work well, as can teamwork building and group problem solving exercises that revolve around communication. Inspiration and some materials for all of this is pretty easy to find online once you have a topic idea, and often needs only minor adjustment/thought before you can run it in the classroom.
I do find that keeping my eye out for interesting articles, ideas etc. when browsing the net personally or for an unrelated class plan is useful. I use delicious to bookmark pages with tags which is really quick and handy, and doesn't distract you from what you are doing. Obviously the longer you are in the game, the more you will have. I also share pretty much everything I make myself with teachers around me, which only encourages others to do the same and helps me reduce my planning time (though do be careful if your classes overlap with said teachers).
I have to agree that if you are using youku and five minutes worth of planning for every lesson you deliver, I cannot imagine you are getting the most out of either your topics, materials or students. |
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