Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Clockout]

my biggest challenge when writing a lesson plan is always determining how long things will take

are there any tricks to this or should I just always have extra stuff planned?

[D.D.]

Timing is a weird thing and experience makes it easier to deal with. Depends more on interaction and the mood of the students. On a good day you can't fit it in and on a bad day times ticks so slow. I don't fight them on a bad day and just give up my lesson for group work and talking. Then I go around seeking out the students that actually care and have a yarn to them.

[thegadfly]

Always have extra stuff planned -- always always always.

The extra stuff you have planned should be things that could be of benefit regardless of when in the school year you do them -- an idiom/figurative language lesson, for example, can be done again and again with different specific idioms or expressions, and might be as short as 2 or 3 minutes, or possibly as long as 10 or more. Keep a few notes about expressions you might focus on, and you are set for any day that runs 5-10 minutes short.

Make three or four kinds of these lessons and keep them tucked away, only to be pulled out when your normal lessons run short. Do not make these lessons part of your "regular" plan.

If figurative language is too advanced, maybe talk about prefixes, suffixes, and roots, or finding meaning from context, or finding part of speech from context, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc, etc, et al, ad nasuseum.

ALWAYS have extra stuff prepared.

[D.D.]

The result of learning idioms and expressions is a population that can't use the language. Still people keep presenting it as lesson plans and wonder why koreans cant't hold a decent conversation.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

I find that idioms and expressions are a useful and important part of mastering English -- I've had students who come in to class after watching hip-hop movies or cartoons and wonder what the heck they've been learning in English class all these years. But I find it best to teach idioms and expressions in context, where they come up in conversation or usage. Giving students a list of expressions to copy or memorize on its own does not work well except with very advanced students.

I've made mistakes in classes, but your best strategy is to overplan. Purposely have too much to do so that you can save it for the next class if it's not done. I do keep a number of small activities in case I run out of things to do, but that happens less often. A discussion about the lesson, or some practice, or a game might work. Try to make those activities somehow relevant to the lesson so that the students do not feel that it is simply filling in time. They will resent it and look at the clock.

Ken:>

[iggyb]

---I skipped the other replies---

Yes. You always need extra material. In fact, it can probably help you see how you are developing as a teacher as you get more and more where you end up not having to use it. But you should always have it there.

I think what happens, especially in Korea in the ESL market - or anywhere where you are not really teaching on a long-term, mapped out curriculum, is --- you start to build routines. You come across this and that item and way of doing this or that which works well, and after using it a few times, you trust it, and it becomes one of the recurrent items you use.

As you build up these routines over time, some will be items you can have on standby to use at a moment's notice - like something you have planned goes too fast, or it just sucks and you get bogged down and need to punt, or the technology you were going to use in the lesson stops working, and so on.

For example,
http://www.esolers.org/lessons/TeachMe/Fables/index.html

That pages describes a simple, easy activity I found worked while teaching Korean adults that I can use with most any class above about 5th grade and above the most basic English ability.

When I first started teaching, and first started in Korea, it took me about 6 months before I started feeling any bit of comfort in how I was doing the job. By about month 10, I had build up enough routines and found enough useful material to keep on the side, I could handle it when the hakwon owner would suddenly switch our classes or I'd have to fill in for the other teacher or I was suddenly farmed out to a factory office worker class or so on.

And you'll always be adding things to your inventory as you stumble across them.

And that is why using the Internet and TESOL sites can help. You can get ideas from people who have already stumbled across something that works for them and might work for you...

[thegadfly]

D.D., aren't you the fellow holding up YouTube videos as a "lesson plan?" Afraid you don't have much room to be snarking in such a way.

Excuse me for not spelling out how to prepare a lesson -- guess I assumed too much -- writing an idiom or figure of speech on the board is not a "lesson."

My idiom lessons include the history and etymology of the expression, which usually grows out of its literal meaning. I present the literal meaning, the figurative meaning, the current denotation of the expression, additional connotations associated with it, examples of situations in which it may be used, examples of situations in which it may not be used, and common mistakes in usage I have encountered. My attentive students, for example, would never say, "give a shot to it" or "shoot it" for "give it a shot."

I guess if you had a few minutes to fill, D.D., you would just turn on a YouTube video and go back to reading your newspaper?

You cast the first stone, buddy. cheers on ya nonetheless!

[D.D.]

[iggyb]

I don't want to get in the middle of a squabble, but, in my ESL classes in an American high school, I used YouTube and TeacherTube effectively to spice up a lesson plan --- and work on listening comprehension...

http://www.esolers.org/musicunitoverview.html

http://www.esolers.org/preunitintro.html

[D.D.]

Too much time on my hands today in rural Korea. I still believe we must get them to use some of their thinking and creating their own sentences and I think few teachers do that. With the newbies arriving it is good to have some good arguments on teaching rather than so many threads on hating our jobs. Which are still fun to write. This year we should argue a bit on teaching so we can grow.

It's funny to see how long the hate threads survive vs. teaching technique threads.

[Easter Clark]

There's nothing wrong with a bit of repetition, as long as the lesson doesn't become repetitive.

Some ways to extend a lesson:

*Change partners.

*Make their own sentences based on the grammar / topic / etc. Exchange and correct if needed.

*Make questions based on the grammar / topic. Then ask the questions to each other.

*Have a quiz to see if they've mastered (or at least retained) the new vocabulary / expressions you've taught them. Then they can exchange the quizzes and score them.

*Have the students report the results of an activity to the class.

These are general ways to extend a class of varying sizes. More can be done depending on the class size.

[thegadfly]

D.D.,

Nothing personal? Do you even know what that means? You started nothing BUT personal, and continued in the same vein (though I must admit I added fuel to the fire -- gave you a taste of what you were doing. It was petty and childish, certainly, but isn't that for what the Interwebs were made?).

You are welcome to come observe my classes any time you wish, so that you can have some truth in your critical statements. I am certainly guilty of a great many things, and have a great many flaws, but not the particular ones you are claiming I have. I live in Pohang, and though I won't pay your transportation, you can sleep on my couch for a night when you are here, and I will buy you a beer after my classes end that day.

Otherwise, shine on, crazy diamond, you haven't a clue, but what's it to you?

I didn't see you OFFER anything to the person asking for input -- perhaps I missed it.