“Organising is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” A.A. Milne
When I worked in a corporate environment, HR organised a personality assessment programme which ‘revealed’ how people best work and how one’s behaviour changes under stress. Actually it was really interesting and different to many of the typical diagnostic tools I had experienced before. Now my own diagnosis did highlight something I was already well aware of – that I have perfectionist tendencies. This has always been the case – teachers at school would ask at parent evening “Why does it take Emma so long to write up an essay?”. Well because I wanted it to look perfect is why – doh!
I’ve relaxed since those insecure and stressful teenage years, but I know full well that I’ve carried an element of this anally retentiveness over into my adult life and it’s alive and well in my work all too often. When it comes to lesson planning, this can on occasions be an issue. It’s easy to get carried away looking for the ‘perfect’ image for that warmer; the ‘perfect’ video; the ‘perfect’ news article.
We’re taught during CELTA classes how to plan and quite rightly so. This lays good foundations upon which we can develop our own ways of planning and techniques for effective lessons. However, I know a number of students during the CELTA course who spent hours of an evening (myself included) putting lessons together, justifying our procedures and estimating TTT. I am not for one moment criticising the process, rather I wonder at what stage we stop doing it. Sometimes I’m aware I’m still doing it (see above and my quest for the ‘perfect’ this or that). Does a more relaxed approach come with time, experience or a sudden realisation you know what you’re doing?
What about putting entire courses together? This is something I do again and again and the more I do it, the easier it is becoming. But how do the ‘old hats’ and even the ‘not so old hats’ among you work it all out?
- How long do your lessons take to plan?
- What is your procedure?
- How do you go about finding materials?
- Are there any particular things a new teacher should be keeping in the back of their mind whilst planning? (e.g. for me and one-one classes it’s always the needs analysis and student objectives – then everything I do is justifiable).
- What about when you have to put a year’s course together?
- Is there somewhere you like to sit or things you like to have around you?
- Do you do the whole lot in one go or take a few days/weeks to mull things over?
- Are your lessons planned ages in advance or do you wait until nearer the time before finalising things in your head?
Please, please share your own techniques, however unique to you or trivial you might think they are. What advice would you give to the ‘in their first three years’ teacher who hasn’t yet found the way to break out of the CELTA tendency to over-plan? Is there such a thing as ‘over-planning’? For me there sure is – it makes me feel like Migraine Barbie.
Migraine Barbie
Keep the new teacher in mind. I would like them to be able to come and read your suggestions and to feel that they are not alone. I’d love for them to have some strategies from the experts which they can try out for themselves.
So many questions – but I’ve taken a pill handed to me by Karenne Sylvester at http://kalinago.blogspot.com/
THANK YOU!
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June 25, 2010 at 22:11
Hi
I’m actually a convert to lesson planning. I didn’t use to plan my lessons at all when I was younger. I’d have a quick look at the book 10 minutes before class and go in and wing it. Now that I’m older and wiser… well, older. I like to plan a lot more.
- I usually take about 20 to 30 minutes to plan a 2-hour lesson – unless I’m writing your own material, then it could take days!!
- I always plan too much material – it gives me options and sometimes things don’t take as long as I think they will, or I decide to skip something in class and move on.
- I always use a coursebook (demands of my employers) but I always keep books with ideas for activities close by: Five-Minute Activities – Ur & Wright; 700 Classroom Activities – Seymour & Popova; Teaching Unplugged – Meddings & Thornbury.
- Remember you’re dealing with people – be flexible. You can’t plan small talk or improvised conversation with your students – and these are just as important as teaching them five new phrasal verbs.
- I LOVE planning courses – I plan about 70% to 80% and leave the rest for stuff that comes up during the course – reassess your students’ needs constantly as you go along. Listen to them.
- I spend a lot of time thinking up ideas and firing them at colleagues to see what they think. Two heads are always better than one – so brainstorm with colleagues. Twitter also really helps, it’s full of people with amazing ideas – your PLN.
Hope this helps.
Eoin
June 25, 2010 at 22:23
Eoin, welcome and thank you for your comment with some very good practical suggestions.
I have to agree with your point about planning courses. I really enjoy getting my teeth into it and it’s extremely rewarding to see the individual lessons fitting together as part of a bigger whole.
Your last point is also spot on for me! As a self-employed teacher, Twitter has been a gift. The opportunity to have input from potentially hundreds of people if necessary is something I am thankful for all the time.
Thank you again for your contribution.
Emma
June 25, 2010 at 23:20
1. Keep lesson plans on a computer.
2. After you teach a lesson go back and modify the plan with any changes you made to make it better.
3. Make sure you attach any handouts to the lesson plan.
4. Plan for differentiated instruction
5. Be ready to change on the fly when teaching.
6. Plan for extra things if your lesson runs short.
My Lesson Plans page: http://cybraryman.com/lessonplans.html
June 26, 2010 at 09:04
Thanks a lot Jerry for your list of practical points. Can you clarify what you mean by “differentiated instruction” and how one should plan for it?
I think your point about being ready to change on the fly is an important one – it happens in most lessons and induces panic in the lives of new teachers. Go with the flow and know that at the end of the day, YOU,as the teacher, are the expert in your field, even if you don’t quite feel like it!
Regarding point 6, having a couple of books like “Five-Minute Activities” Penny Ur can really help just in case you need a filler.
Emma
Thanks again!
Emma
June 26, 2010 at 01:20
When I first started teaching I tried to ‘wing’ it as well. Most of the time I was able to throw something together 10 minutes before class. My students however, quickly realized I wasn’t always prepared and started taking advantage of it.
Before I started my second year I took a TEFL course (I hadn’t before). More than anything this course taught me the benefits of properly preparing for each class.
One quick tip I’ll share is to create a form to fill out for each class Nothing fancy, but this organized my time better and allowed me to make sure I hit all the points I wanted to for each class.
I enjoyed this blog and have included it in a list of interesting blog posts from this week. You can see this post on my blog here:
http://www.gooverseas.com/go-abroad-blog/week-overseas-june-25th/3265
Thanks!
Andrew
June 29, 2010 at 18:46
Hi Andrew,
You’re so right – our students certainly notice if we wing it. The majority of my teaching is in a business environment, where (and I’ve been told so on occasions) the student’s’ time is very important and the lesson is squeezed between two meetings. I become painfully aware therefore of making every minute count and they would pull me up so quickly if I went in unprepared
Quite rightly too – our students deserve our awareness don’t they.
It’s funny you mention the point about a form. When I worked in sales, we were asked to plan our time using a blank grid (it was sort of a company policy thing). I don’t think I appreciated how useful it actually was because I very quickly started using it in my teaching. In fact I think I will include it in the main blog post so that others, perhaps new teachers, my use it if they so wish.
Thank you so much for including the blog on your round-up – it’s very much appreciated.
June 26, 2010 at 08:44
not sure which pill you mean the blue or the red
…
To be honest I’ve spent more time in my life planning lesons than not planning until I saw the light… let me see how I can tell this in the shortest possible way
when I started teaching I was unqualified, it was a run-out-of-money-backpacker-in-Asia experience. In HK, all of a sudden I had to teach classes and had zero concept of what even the present perfect was… (like there was a name for the different ways we speak our sentences, go figure)… and it showed…
like you I’m a perfectionist…
had absolutely zero idea that there was a profession in ELT, when I started out nor seriously that there were coursebooks you could buy (seriously… was working in a hole in the wall) but that hole in the wall had a few reference books on the shelves and JeremyHarmer’s book was one of them.
Taught myself what to do with almost no materials, no internet to download stuff from and planned and planned and planned and planned… (actually made stuff – talk about your reinventing the wheel – as once I did find a book store that sold textbooks found out that I didn’t actually have to draw pictures for kids to colour in and name items as per the alphabet etc)!
Anyway… sometime after all this working to my kids, teens and adults needs… but planning like a madwoman… I wound up running a charity, way too long a story to tell, but our children were taught by teenagers and through them I learned the most important thing of all, that language comes out of the desire to communicate – and when it is focused on the need of that particular moment – the learning goes deeper and deeper and it stays… because it has context… and that context is often not something you can plan towards….
And then I went back to the UK and did my certTESOL and like you, learned how to plan – step by step and stage by stage – one class or 20 classes – but it felt so deep down wrong.. and by the time I was in Ecuador all I did was plan and plan and plan – especially because I wanted to keep the materials to be about the students… but it all felt so dang wrong… something was a amiss
And then Germany… and somewhere along the line found about dogme (I was researching something all together different) but I’d read Thornbury’s how to teach speaking and liked it… and dogme just fit me..
It made total sense, I “got” it…. but I confess it still took forever to let go of the idea that in order for language to emerge you can’t plan and plan and plan… you can’t – you have to let the language come out – you have to brave enough to simply trust that you will be able to deal with things then and there… you can direct, you can sometimes initiate if the conversation slips… but your job is to create an atmosphere of almost casual communication…
And that really, I think that’s what deep teaching, is, I think – you see, thing is, when you plan and plan and plan -then you give and give but most of us humans don’t really learn from being given to but from giving back – we don’t so much learn from passive rote repetition but from actively putting something into contextual use repetitively and so, IMHO, teaching languages, I think, it’s more about being confident enough to know that you don’t need a road map, you just need a compass.
xxhope that was useful,
Karenne
June 29, 2010 at 20:38
The pills were different colours? Oh I just swallowed a bunch of them
Thank you Karenne for taking the time to write a response filled with so much reflection and practical pointers.
I say on my ‘About me’ section on this site, that I feel the CELTA changed my life. I share with you your sense of actually not having much of a clue about the profession until those four weeks were over (Scott who?). It certainly is an eye opener and perhaps it serves an extremely valid purpose in ‘merely’ sending us off in approximately the right direction until we find our groove.
My heart sinks a little on your behalf when I read about you drawing pictures for your students to label and colour-in. Hurray now for the internet indeed. But when I first started out, it was those diagrams and little creative things I would spend the most time on, rather than whether this activity was even right for my students in the first place. I certainly do admire your commitment in those early stages!
You know me and my dabblings in the dark art of Dogme – in fact Profs Thornbury and Meddings would make good Masters of the Dark Arts (a la Harry Potter) do you not think? Seriously though I have posted about the dogme lessons I’ve done on the group and I find it makes total sense to me. Going into those lessons (in that particular scenario) was terribly liberating. I don’t think it would work for all of my students mind. Right now I work with a mixture of a dogme approach and a TBL approach – I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive by any means. One week I may do a dogme-lens lesson during with I try to harvest as much language from the student as possible. I ensure we focus on three language points during a 1.5hr lesson (thanks Scott and Luke for that idea) – the student must choose from a selection of language points to focus on but they often go with Grammar, Vocab and Pronunciation. Each of those is focussed on for half an hour. This just ensures it’s not a chit chat. Then with a greater knowledge of some of the areas the student needs to focus on, I might put together a set of TBL lessons for the following three weeks and so the cycle continues. There’s a smattering of the Lexical Approach in there too – it’s all good stuff in my opinion
My point I guess in all of that is that I 100% agree with you – context is key, whatever approach we’re taking and I think that at the moment we stop taking our students’ needs into consideration and take our tasks and activities out of context, we might as well not bother planning at all – we then have to ask ourselves “what am I planning for?”. Perhaps the main purpose in planning is more to do with justification? If the task selection is tangible, if it correlates directly to your learners’ needs, then you cannot go wrong. Everything else is about timing right? Or too simple? Maybe that’s why the planning everything feels wrong. Does it become clinical and removed from people by proxy?
Your experience in Germany where you describe how you first heard about a dogme approach is interesting. I don’t want this to turn into yet another discussion on whether dogme is credible or not. I do have a strong belief though that dogme must not be seen as simply walking into the classroom and hoping that something of value will emerge. There is no reason why the dogme ‘lens’ does not allow for a themed, planned out lesson in terms of tasks to be covered. It is not crossing your fingers and thinking up language on the spot. It’s surly about concentrating on the part of the teacher more than anything – staying at all times in the present with your student(s) and recycling the language that emerges. *phew* I think I went a bit evangelical there!
COMPASS! Yes!!!
June 26, 2010 at 11:26
Interesting topic, Emma…
In the early days of teaching ESOL I used to map out my lessons in fairly meticulous detail as well. However, it didn’t take me long to arrive at the concusion that this was a very poor use of my time, given that:
a) More often than not, the lesson I’d actually wind up teaching on the day bore little or no resemblance to what I’d written down on paper;
b) Many of the most successful lessons turned out be the ones where I’d abandoned the lesson plan because it wasn’t working and ventured off the beaten track
c) The lesson plans I’d written could only ever be used as a one-off because I’d tailored them to the needs of a particular learner group… and;
d) Nobody ever read the detailed lesson plans that I had written, anyway (not even me!)
From a purely personal perspective, I also feel that lesson plans can be inclined to stifle creativity at times, though that may possibly be down to the fact that I’m an artsy type and prefer to go wherever the lesson flow takes me rather than stick to a pre-ordained plan.
These days, I tend to go with a rock solid scheme of work and a one-page lesson outine of whatever I’m planning to cover on the day, which, for an experienced teacher I think really ought to be enough!
Although it sounds like you may not be quite ready to abandon the CELTA creed yet,
I expect your gut instinct will tell you when :the time is right…
When drawing up schemes of work, my advice would be to find out as much information as you can about the backgrounds and interests of the students you will be teaching, and work it into the framework for your course.
Keeping student journals can be a good means of providing structure for your lessons, and it’s also a good way to track progression and provide differentiation.
hope this helps
Sue
June 30, 2010 at 11:32
Hi Sue,
You touch on a number of very good points here and in particular the one to do with tracking progression and perhaps thereby also student expectation. A motivated and conscientious student is soon going to become a tad disheartened by the teacher who seems to lack any direction come to lessons with no apparent plan and no feedback on what has been covered. So I can’t help wondering whether the issue you’ve highlighted about progress, is perhaps almost as important as the planning of the lesson in itself.
To be honest this post comes at a point when I’m becoming more aware of the limits on my time (a pattern I’m seeing in the stories that people are telling in these comments) and a realisation that planning until the early hours isn’t the guarantee of a successful lesson. Deep down I think I always knew that – I am a huge fan of the dogme approach and trying that out, was certainly the first step in throwing off some of the perfectionist tenancies….little and often I tell myself
I think CELTA arms new teachers with a tool belt of things to use in the classroom. We learn there how to pick and choose certain tools for certain situations. I think we need the real world experience (and some “get it” quicker than others) to learn that it’s ok not to pack all the tools every time, that some tools just aren’t really necessary and we can do a lot with our own imagination and hands at the end of the day. I’m not going any further with the tool belt analogy!
June 26, 2010 at 12:39
I think the first thing I realised when I came off the course was that planning the timing of your lesson really isn’t important. You have an idea of how long an activity is going to take, but when you actually get into the classroom, it’s a whole new kettle of fish. So, it’s vital that you always have those five-minute (or twenty-minute) activities in the back of your head for when something takes less time than you imagined. On the other hand, it’s always great when students get really involved in something and it takes up most of the lesson rather than the time you’d allotted it.
I found it quite difficult when I “went back to school” to do the YL course after teaching for 3 years – suddenly I had to analyse my TTT and timing again!
June 30, 2010 at 12:04
Hi Teresa,
I’m hearing a lot of people talk about going back to education themselves and finding they need to plan meticulous lessons again
There’s a theme developing there for sure.
I do love it when you can almost sit back and “let it run” as Scott and Luke say in “Teaching Unplugged”. I’d much rather run out of time because students were absorbed in the task than have to think up something else to pad the time out. But in training courses we are often judged on our ability to get it spot on to the minute which I don’t think at all realistic.
How did the planning of lessons during your Young Learners course differ from the CELTA?
June 27, 2010 at 12:36
Hi Emma,
I enjoyed reading your post about lesson planning it made me think of all of those long hours on the Cert course planning lessons and post Cert. I used to spend ages thinking about every classroom detail. I would plan every stage and plan back-up materials just in case.
Teaching after 8-9 years became much more natural and my planning time was minimal. At that time I did my Dip which saw me once again planning meticulous llesson plans.
Post Dip my lesson planning focused on pron and teaching intonation and stress. What have I learnt over the years? Less is more!
Thanks for sharing
Leahn
June 27, 2010 at 13:27
Thank you Leahn for your comments here.
You’ve also said the same – you started off planning like a mad thing and then began to use your time more effectively. I’m really interested though that you mentioned not planning so much and then having to plan every detail in your Diploma again. Was the nature of the planning the same or were you planning for different outcomes? If the nature of the planning was the same, I think I would have felt like I was moving backwards!
Emma
June 29, 2010 at 23:09
Well planning on the Dip is much more intense that the Cert and I think Karenne wrote an article about different stages of teaching and Dip stage I think is like the conscious competent that she mentions. Basically you begin to really understand what you are doing and why. You learn more about SLA and your teaching and planning becomes heightened. Well, that’s what happened to me! Veryy interesting Emma
June 29, 2010 at 23:11
Oh I forgot to talk about the importance of micro teaching skills. I just wanted to say that the best macro teaching skills (planning) won’t help you very much if you can’t transmit the plan in the class and although planning is important it’s the day to day running of a class the micro stuff that is really important.
June 30, 2010 at 12:07
This is interesting stuff. The more I think about this, the more the notion of consciousness seems to be more important that the lesson plans themselves. What is the point at all of planning if we are not conscious of what, or why, or for who we are planning?
Thank you for your thought-provoking comments.
June 27, 2010 at 14:07
I don’t do any formal lesson plans. I use an excel spreadsheet for my plans each week with each day a fresh page. That way I can plug in the new material for each day and keep the things we do daily.
I teach kindergarten and the action is constantly changing and evolving. Every student will meet the material from a new perspective. I would not spend much time planning for all the possibilities of the 10 blocks we complete before we break for an early lunch, let alone a whole day or whole week. It is critical that I keep an eye on what each student needs every step. Huge amounts of time are spent on modeling, practice, and repeat for everything we do. The most interesting work on the fly involves ELL and language challenged students, where I really try to make sure they are getting the meaning. This is always a challenge as they will often “fake it” in order to not be singled out. Checking in with all students as they work is at the core. In that way, I can see what kind of learners they are, where their personal struggles are, and help correct/clarify misunderstandings. All of this gets them to the holy grail of kindergarten – working independently – which frees me up for small group and leveled instruction.
Followed you hear via a tweet from @ShellTerrell
June 27, 2010 at 15:26
Hello there Emma…
just a brief comment to say…
I don’t think it’s the actual writing of the plan that’s important so much as the discipline of raising the consciousness of the teacher. Making you think about everything you do rather than working on auto-pilot. I’ve certainly noticed this since the Diploma… whereas I might once have thought…”I did this last time and it worked”..now I think more about the particular group of individuals in front of me and whether I could do it differently for them… Or even more better…whether they could do it differently for themselves.
Brief comment, I’m sorry… but thanks for the blog and post!!
Laura
June 30, 2010 at 12:14
YES YES YES!!!!!!!!! I have just replied to Leahn’s comment above and wrote exactly that! You have managed to put it into words that sound right
“The discipline of raising the consciousness of the teacher” – because when we work in this way and our consciousness is tuned in to the needs of the learner, the tasks, activities and materials we choose for our learners will be appropriate. All that remains is it the delivery and well, that comes with time.
I wonder if my next post should be about material selection….what do you think?
Emma x
June 27, 2010 at 23:10
Hi Emma,
I, too, fall into the ‘perfectionist’ category.
In my first year of teaching, post-CELTA, my lesson plans were meticulously constructed. My colleagues were in awe of my files and my organisation, and attention to detail was noted in observations. But this did very little, actually, for my confidence in my ability to teach. And rightly so! I actually felt quite embarrassed by these comments as I knew myself that the over-planning was a sign of my own insecurity. The teachers I aspired to be like were those who could go into a lesson with a scribble on the back of a fag packet and keep their learners engaged and productive throughout.
In my second year of teaching I made a conscious decision NOT to write lesson plans (even though I knew this would not go down well with management, and I decided that if I were challenged about the lack of paperwork in my file, I would put my argument forward). That’s not to say I stopped planning altogether, but instead I produced more of a ‘storyboard’ of what might happen. This worked just fine, and I felt comfortable to be more flexible in deviating from the plan and adaptive to what was working at the time – even if this meant omitting parts or going off on a tangent I hadn’t even thought of prior to the class. In the future, however, I hope that I wont even need to rely on that.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I think the planning we are encouraged to do initially is hugely beneficial as it forces us to think about the structure of our lessons, although as we progress in our careers, this becomes less important and we can foster a more organic approach to teaching.
Best, as ever, Callie
…I hasten to add that on the odd occasion where I have gone into a lesson completely unprepared, it has been an utter disaster. So clearly I’ve not quite reached my goal yet…
June 30, 2010 at 12:25
CALLIE – welcome and thank you for your personal experiences here with planning.
I have to smile at you first paragraph. This was exactly how I was. People would eye up my colour-coded notes with envy. But in the end, what does it achieve? I am a good note-taker (yeah and?) – as you say, it doesn’t reflect one’s ability to actually teach anything. Certainly for me, and this is where the impetus for this blog post came from, thinking back to my notes and perfectionist tendencies, I’m aware they mainly serve to be a rod for my own back. This is because when something doesn’t go “according to plan”, we then have to take ten minutes at the end of the lesson to beat ourselves with sticks and what rubbish teachers we are. Actually it is our faith in our own flawed planning that is to blame and not us as teachers. That’s not meant to sound harsh – I’m coming at your point from my own experience which seems to be very similar to yours.
Maybe you should collect empty fag packets (don’t go through the rubbish bins though) for writing your outlines on – everyone needs a goal after all
Emma
June 28, 2010 at 19:11
As a young and unexeperienced teacher I used to plan every minute. Ten years later I do have an elastic plan in my mind when walking into the class. In my mind only. My main aim is to create the right atmosphere to make the kind of language needed encompassed by the talking. And to make sure it fits exactly not only their level, but the particular students of this particular class. This kind of mental preparation is done on the bus, in the morning (after coffee) and on my way to school (half an hour’s walk).
As for the material, I kind of think of it all the time : the radio programme I’m listening to, the magazine at the dentist’s, the kids’ games, ads, videos, medicine notices, weather forecast, the pics I take, virtually anything is a potential “material” for my classes.
June 30, 2010 at 12:49
Alice – thank you for bringing up your own methods when it comes to material selection. I think this might be worthy of a post all on its own to be honest. I too have my best ideas when I’m not actually having ‘work time’ so to speak. Tends to be in the shower or just as I’m falling off to sleep. My Blackberry voice notes recorder is wonderful as when I wake up in the morning, the idea has gone!
When you spot your materials as you go about the day, what is your criteria? Should it just be interesting or fun. Or do you look at something and think ” that would be great for work on the third conditional”? I just really interested at the different ways people go about setting up the lessons, in whatever way, and I’m looking at ways I can use these techniques myself and how they can be of benefit to the new teachers reading this.
June 28, 2010 at 21:35
I think that there’s a difference between planning and writing a detailed plan…..
I think when starting out, writing a really detailed lesson plan is a good way to get you tuned in to the various things that you have to think about..
Now my everyday planning is working out what I want in terms of learning/aims objectives and planning how I will acheive that – but that’s often in the form of sketchy details, rather than a mega plan… A lot of teaching is about reacting to the situations that emerge in a lesson, so I find that a really detailed plan is sometimes not flexible enough.
That’s not to say that I don’t plan the sessions – I find the same as Callie mentioned above, if I don’t plan what I’m going to do – the results are pretty bad.
I think, though dogme-ists will disagree, that it really helps me knowing where I’m getting to and having a good idea of how to get there – but being able to adjust the lesson as it unfolds is key.
June 30, 2010 at 18:59
Thanks Phil
You’re so right to make that distinction between the general planning and the detailed plan. It’s finding the balance that is key for the new teacher and having the guts to trust that they will be able to cope if every minute of the lesson isn’t accounted for.
I don’t think dogme-ists would give you lashings. Dogme isn’t about going into a lesson with no idea at all about what you’re going to do and keeping fingers crossed something will happen. It’s more about the teacher’s focus during the lesson in my opinion and having an outline of what one is hoping to touch upon doesn’t go against any materials-light principal.
Emma
June 28, 2010 at 22:51
After teaching for over 10 years I am still an ‘over-planner’. Like Phil I rarely write out a full lesson plan, but I do plan, and couldn;t imagine not doing. When putting together a 1/2 termly scheme of work I usually start with a topic, then look at the language/skills needed to be covered and then look for materials.
I’m very lucky to work in an office where everyone is happy to share ideas and resources. every class has a scheme of work saved on a shared drive. Materials that tutors find, adapt, create, use are linked to the SOW and saved in tfolders by level, So doing a quick search brings up lots of great resources that I know have been used by fellow ESOL teachers in the office and I can go ask them how they used something if I needed to.
When it comes to planning the actual lesson, I’ll consider the learning outcome,( trying to ensure a balance through the course) and then build up activities based on the materials I have.
It’s rare that I plan lessons while sitting at my desk, the session usually comes together in my head, usually while driving to and from work. I try to visualise the lesson, how activiites will work with the students, how I want to group them, if anyone needs any extra support or think of some extention activities for stronger learners.
I think part of being a professional is about being able to evidence the good practice within our jobs, and this includes being able to produce usable lesson plans. This is what shows that when something works well it’s because we know what we’re diong and we can articulte this – and it’s not a fluke.
June 30, 2010 at 22:06
It’s great to have another ESOL teacher here on the blog! Your office setup sounds ideal and I’m sure you have many jealous friends now
What a wonderful resource though to have access to a pool of ideas and co-workers who are happy to share and advise.
I said in my reply to Alice that I tend to have my best lesson ideas when I’m doing other things – gardening, cleaning and other boring things. For me anyway those quiet moments allow the best creative thoughts.
Your point about visualising the lesson has really struck a chord with me. Very simple, almost obvious yet incredibly effective. I actually heard a very similar tip some time ago for people who experience anxiety in meetings or whilst giving presentations. The technique was to imagine the meeting or presentation already underway and visualise the people in the room and imagine actually talking. It can then become easier to try to anticipate potential problems, fears or things that might need addressing.
You have also thrown into the bag another point which hasn’t yet been discussed. If we work in an environment such as yours, where teachers readily share their ideas and lesson plans, it surly becomes necessary for those lesson plans to be legible and able to be understood by our colleagues. I would think therefore in that situation that good practice is essential.
June 29, 2010 at 02:10
So much great stuff here, a very stimulating blog post and then a really varied and rewarding comment thread. I love Karenne’s thoughts on deep teaching.
So many recognition moments – like Leahn I came out of my Delta doing much more on intonation and stress. Why is that?! My Delta observed lessons were so over-planned it was absurd, I mean totally crazy looking back. They were completely against my instincts and teaching experience. But I guess when in Rome – do like the Romans. Thing is, you gotta get out of Rome and find what works for you. So many different approaches here – from forms to storyboards to spreadsheets – and as Sue suggests different things work for different people and personalities.
Alice’s description of thinking of material all the time – ‘virtually anything is a potential “material” for my classes’ is very close to my approach – the only thing I would add is that if you can encourage the people in class to think like that, even some of them some of the time, they will start to bring in their own material and that becomes part of the ongoing narrative of the class. Making sense of that narrative – the flow of what Karenne calls ‘almost casual communication’ (and the ‘almost’ counts in that phrase, it’s a subtle process) – becomes the challenge. By talking about what’s happened in class, what that communication has enabled everyone to do with and learn about language – you can create a kind of living framework for the class. This framework emerges from the most recent lesson and feeds into the next. And it doesn’t hurt to write it down either!
June 29, 2010 at 13:10
Thank you Emma for this wonderful post.
There are great questions to be answered before or while planning your lessons.
And all the comments add something new to the things we’ve already known.
I love Jerry Blumengarten’s #1 and #6 also I agree with Sue and experienced that things can go wrong sometimes and you need to abandon the thing you’ve already planned.
I’m not a dogmeist but sometimes I find myself close and I totally agree with
Phil and Callie that if I don’t plan what I’m going to do – things can become rather messy and I observed also the students feel comfortable when they understand where they are going with the teacher so mostly at the beginning of each week I tell my students what we’ll be doing that week so they can have a map while learning.
Eva
June 30, 2010 at 00:05
The subject of planning came up today on the Methods course I’m teaching at the New School in NY, and I made the distinciton between “preparing” and “being prepared” (a distinction that Dennis Newson first made me aware of, in a posting on the Dogme site). To which one of the trainee teachers added Eisenhower’s (apparently well known) epigram: “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” Is there an analogy lurking there?
(Great blog, Emma!)
July 1, 2010 at 03:27
What an interesting post, Emma, and the follow up discussion is superb.
I blogged recently about over-planning being a bit of disincentive to adequately reflect about our teaching, and how planning could be considered a bit useless in the broader scheme of things if we do not dedicate at least an equivalent amount of time and energy to reflection.
http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/05/without-reflection-we-may-be-planning-to-stand-still.html
Anyway, I hope Mr. Harmer reads your post here and has something to say, because his most recent edition of PELT has some interesting points about the “lesson planning paradox”…
Cheers,
- Jason
July 1, 2010 at 14:42
Hi Emma,
Great post and comments here.
I did my own version of your post (albeit not quite as considered as you put it here – a blog post as a blunt instrument, it was, rather than a thoughtful prod maybe…)
Anyway, got some great comments from people. Please check them out.
http://mikeharrison.edublogs.org/2010/05/16/how-late-is-too-late-to-plan-a-lesson/
Best
Mike
July 22, 2010 at 21:10
Earlier today, I had a similar discussion with a group of CELTA trainees who questioned the value of detailed and explicit lesson planning, since on the job afterwards, they are not going to have ‘this kind of time’ that they are now dedicating to lesson planning.
I replied with the same words which I imagine every CELTA or DELTA tutor respond to similar comments by trainees: this type of explicit lesson planning has its place and reason for being on a course as it ‘raises awareness’ as someone very accurately said earlier in this discussion. It is intended to encourage reflection and the ability to articulate clearly and precisely what one aims to do and why. Given this kind of practice, a teacher is later much more likely to be able to reproduce these reflections mentally, if not on paper, and even more likely to be able to ‘see through’ lessons, materials or activities, which have been thrown together without any rhyme or reason.
Post course, an experienced teacher – one who has gone through the paces of this type of explicitness – will probably need to plan in so much detail less and less.
But lesson shapes and blueprints or microplanned sequences will tend to remain in memory and they will constitute the scaffolding on which to build best practice – even when totally unplanned and spontaneously generated and created on the spot.
And of course, as Laura said, the value of this is also in the teacher’s reflection after the lesson has been taught – thinking back and reflecting on what went well and what didn’t go so well, so that the next attempt is more refined and more likely to be effective.
But for this to succeed, it is not only the explicitness that counts while training. What is of value is the cultivation of the ability to be self-critical, to avoid compacency and to question oneself fairly but honestly.
Thanks for starting this discussion, dear Emma – am passing it on to those still wondering!
Marisa
August 7, 2010 at 10:59
Hello Emma,
Sorry to be late to answer your question. Yes, when I see some material I always have something in mind, almost instantly, to teach a grammar point or to use as a cultural item.
Hello Marisa,
I fully agree with all you wrote. Raising awareness and reflecting about one’s practice are keys. I just wished our PGCE teachers had told us those were the points of all the planning, that we would not be planning all our lives forever, when more experienced. I just wished our PGCE teachers had told us about the *beauty* of language, that it was a valuable aim to help the students discover beauty. How extraordinary and amazing language is. How packed with meaning, how fun, how powerful, how mysterious, how delicate.
Alice
October 30, 2010 at 19:11
Hi Emma
I find I’m a bit late to this post, but remains very interesting, and everone has made great comments. From primary school, I remember the shock I experienced once when I realised I’d made a mistake in my new exercise book, and how it was ruined. Being neat and tidy is stifling. It’s like they say, someone who never made a mistake never made anything.
David
November 6, 2010 at 23:15
Hi Emma,
Obviously lesson planning is very situation-bound.
As a seasoned teacher, I have piles ice-breakers ready for first lessons, (I find it impossible to plan anything until I’ve met the students) after which the most important thing is the write up of the lesson asap after it has taken place (If that’s missing I have to start winging it, which often turns up interesting lessons
With a clear write up of the lesson it becomes obvious what has to be prepared – so since the initial request was, I think, what advice to new teachers, I’d say take time at the end of the lesson to write up exactly what went on – especially if you only see the students once a week, as I do.
Then, and I’m speaking about adult learners in an academic system, with our ultimate weapon of MARKS – the students have to keep a “course log” – their own acount of what they learnt.
Here’s one such course log (a star pupil of course
http://marjo.edublogs.org
Hope you can make it to TESOLFR
December 9, 2010 at 03:14
Hey Emma,
I’m new here, but I absolutely am enjoying your blog. Lesson planning for me – as a few people have mentioned – is a fluid thing. Some days my class can go off exactly how I had planned/prepared for it. (Two thumbs up to Scott Thornbury’s comment re: planning vs. being prepared. I like that.) Other days it just flies out the window.
For me, planning is important because it helps me be clear about what my students need to try and accomplish that day/week/month etc. It keeps me on target. (Important for when you’re working with corporate courses with strict deadlines on them.)
Planning lets me see where I need to focus attention: after each class, I try to go over my plan and compare it to what really happened. Did we get sidetracked? Why? (Most of the time, for me anyway, sidetracks happen when students aren’t getting something being taught. When I notice those “delays” it allows me to develop materials for next class to try and help students along in that trouble area.
My favorite tool to get material: Google Reader. I teach Business English in a variety of settings. From Directors to managers to call center operators. Sometimes (more often than not) course books just don’t do it. They don’t engage enough – so over the years I have seeded my trusty RSS reader with a multitude of blogs, podcasts etc. on a wide variety of topics. (Marketing, Leadership, management, etc.) This work has literally saved me hours and hours of prep. If I’m looking for material around a certain topic, I jump into my Reader account and just search for it. 95% of the time I get what I’m looking for pretty quick. I am also a wide reader of said blogs. So I have a pretty good idea of where to look for certain topics.
I hope this helps you.
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June 29, 2010 at 12:27