# Question for any teachers re lesson plans



## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

Just looking for sympathy/advice/re-assurance really.....and to moan a little.

I'm new to teaching & obviously expect things to be a little tough at first (well, for quite a while!), but I'm finding lesson planning INCREDIBELY difficult and time consuming. Have been sat here all day trying to write a plan for a 2 hour class next week and it's still all over the place  I know what I want to teach & what I want the students to learn, but it's structuring it I find so hard. I keep putting things in one order & then realising it makes no sense atall and completely changing it. Am just getting in a complete confused muddle & feel like i'm going mad.

Can any teachers (or anyone else with advice) help? How do you write your lesson plans? how do you get them to flow and make sense? I kind of feel I'll get there eventually, but it shouldn't be taking me 10 bloody hours to get there!! I really need a guinea pig to test run it on, but there's no one around today so dont have that option....


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## nagapie (Oct 16, 2011)

You're supposed to start with your objective first but I generally formulate my lesson around what I want to teach and then write the objective to match.

Model lesson: Do a quick activity that has a link just to get the brains thinking, do a question and answer session to elicit the concept you want to teach (get it recorded on the board and get them to take it down as notes before you move on as this also gives you time to check on everyone), model an example of what you want to teach, give a few practices going from easy to more difficult examples, get the students to create something using what you've taught, and then do some sort of plenary that requires them to connect what they've learnt to something else which will enable you to see what they've learnt but also make them think further.

The most helpful thing ever said to me about lesson planning was to stop thinking what I would be doing and think of it all from the students' perspective i.e what the students will be doing. So what I've said above but thinking about it from that perspective. Also timings are important, have a rough idea how much time everything will take and make sure generally nothing lasts more than 10-15min until you get to the examples and big outcomes.


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## nagapie (Oct 16, 2011)

Oh yeah, double lessons as you seem to have to teach require a variety of activities. Try to include some sort of media input like a video or sound clip or a bit of structured research.


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

i wish i could use media.....all i have in my 'classroom' is a flipchart! And sometimes not even that.
Thanks for the other advice though. It all makes sense and it's all stuff i've been taught & should know. I just struggle with getting it down into an actual lesson plan. Argh. Please tell me it gets easier....!


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

oh, and the problem i have with this particular lesson is that it carries over from last weeks so i won't really be having a warmer/starter activity. So at the end of last lesson, students were preparing presentations. This week, they'll finish their prep and give the presentations. Then i have to continue the lesson so my lesson plan starts from there. And the additional problem is that I'm being observed (for the first time ), hopefully from the point after students have finished their presentations so am trying to construct a whole present/apply/review thing that the observers can see.


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## nagapie (Oct 16, 2011)

If you're being observied you absolutely must do something that shows what you taught them before they started their presentations or you won't show any teaching and context. Do a brainstorm on the board at the start to show their general knowledge and then give each pair a minute to tell you how they are doing with their presentation, like a quick action plan. You can still do a starter activity before that, what's the topic? And if most of the lesson is their presentations, you need to set up some sort of peer assessment.


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## BlueSquareThing (Oct 16, 2011)

Hellsbells said:


> i wish i could use media.....all i have in my 'classroom' is a flipchart! And sometimes not even that.



You can print photos or diagrams and stuff though, yeah? Or get them working in pairs on bigger bits of paper with coloured pens for a bit? Or have a radio or some sort of music on?

None of that's meant to be negative about you or your lesson btw, just some ideas that might be worth playing with. Oh, could they use their phones for something at some point?

2 hours? Chunk it, sure. Try to get them active in some parts. Try to get some pair work in parts maybe, depending on the class/what you're trying to teach. If you plan chunky sort of bits like that then you should be able to put them together in lots of different orders and end up with something worth trying out. Don't worry if it doesn't work the best first time btw - things often don't!

One way to bookend a lesson - or a section of a lesson - might be to use some what do you know grids. I've got some resources here - http://www.bluesquarething.co.uk/geography/geogpages.htm#grids - and they got blogged about by someone else who made some tweaky suggestions as well - http://somersetgeography.posterous.com/what-do-they-know-grids I've been told other people like them - might be worth a look (apparently men in suits quite like them as well).

Hth etc...


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

nagapie said:


> If you're being observied you absolutely must do something that shows what you taught them before they started oftheir presentations or you won't show any teaching and context. Do a brainstorm on the board at the start to show their general knowledge and then give each pair a minute to tell you how they are doing with their presentation, like a quick action plan. You can still do a starter activity before that, what's the topic? And if most of the lesson is their presentations, you need to set up some sort of peer assessment.



I've asked the observors to come after the presentations  since they're student led & won't show me doing any real teaching. The class is adult literacy  (equivalent to GCSE level - although students are varied mix of ages and abilities). The presentations are group presentations - each group has been looking at a different text last week and analysing it in terms of audience/purpose/features/language etc. They'll present their findings back to the class. Then the main focus of the lesson - the bit I'm being observed on - I'm focusing on one particular text type - instructions. The first activity I had planned was to get students in pairs to look at maybe 4 recipes for the same dish each written slightly differently & to decide which they liked best/worst. Then feedback to class why - look at dif features of instrucive texts etc etc. And then various other activities. Ending with them doing a role play then writing instructions for each other.


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## nagapie (Oct 16, 2011)

Do some sort of game starter where they have to instruct someone to do something. Then elicit the ideas of the key features of this sort of text from them from the game. Then get them to sequence a cut up text of this type. This will help them to understand the structure of an instructive text. Maybe give them a few paragraphs and they have to do true or false as to whether it's an instructive text. At some point get them to underline and label the key features of the text onto it. Then get them to write some sort of instruction, maybe for a game or hobby of theirs. That's just off the top of my head but if I think of something better I'll let you know.


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

Thanks so much nagapie. That's exactly the kind of structure i needed but find impossible to work out in my own head. I tend to have loads of ideas that are just all over the place. Just need to adapt what I've already got (can't bring myself to abandon 6 hours of work!) to fit into your (or a similar) structure.


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

Am kind of getting there but would really appreciate a little more advice. This is what i have now:

Starter - discuss when they use/give instructions in own lives. Give instructions to partner (eg - how to get from college to tube st). Elicit features of instructive text. Write on board.
THEN - this is the bit where i get confused. Not sure which of these 2 activities to do next. Activity 1 is a cut up recipe. Want them to sort the bits that are info from the instructions, then sequence instructions. Then identify features discussed before & highlight (eg imperatives, adverbs etc). Activity 2 is giving them 4 different recipes for same dish. Some have no formatting & are really descriptive, others set out clearly and concisely with pictures etc. Want them to sort in order of preference & give reasons. I'm thinking activity 2 should come first....? But not sure. I keep swapping them round 

Following this, will get them to write a set of instructions giving them different scenarios so they'll be practising writing for different audiences.


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## Mrs Magpie (Oct 16, 2011)

If it's a follow-on lesson, do a recap of the previous lesson as a starter. Loads of stuff on the TES website. Look under resources.


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## nagapie (Oct 16, 2011)

Use activity 2 as the plenary, just make it shorter. And you'd better time everything as if they're only observing your second hour, you've got a lot in there already and might have to be prepared to start the long task but not quite get to the end of it.


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## Hellsbells (Oct 16, 2011)

Thanks. The class normally get through things really quick so i figured it best to have as many actitivities as possible, rather than run out of stuff which is what happened the first few times i taught them. Will work on timings tomorow. Feel like i can breathe a bit now!


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## Mrs Magpie (Oct 16, 2011)

Have extension work for the faster ones too. If they finish well before everyone and have nothing to do they can get disruptive.


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## sim667 (Oct 17, 2011)

I generally turn up and hope for the best......... And just make sure I've got all the paper work done for observations.

My main issue is im being expected to teach 18 16-19 year olds in a room which is meant to be a photographic studio, we have 5 chairs, and one computer..... So i really cant plan to do stuff with them as a group


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## elfman (Oct 17, 2011)

I'm teaching a totally different level to you and in very different conditions but after a couple of months doing the job I'm finding it much easier to do lesson plans and have sort of got a rhythm for it. When I'm stuck I have a few websites I use to give me a bit of inspiration.

btw, Is there any way you can get your hands on better equipment because if there was a way that you could that would help a lot especially in such long lessons. Teaching for 2 hours at a time must be hard!


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## Hellsbells (Oct 17, 2011)

elfman said:


> I'm teaching a totally different level to you and in very different conditions but after a couple of months doing the job I'm finding it much easier to do lesson plans and have sort of got a rhythm for it. When I'm stuck I have a few websites I use to give me a bit of inspiration.
> 
> btw, Is there any way you can get your hands on better equipment because if there was a way that you could that would help a lot especially in such long lessons. Teaching for 2 hours at a time must be hard!



Think it'll take me longer than a few months to get the hang of this - for various reasons I'm practically having to design the entire course myself as the college have never done anything similar before - dif curriculum/dif exam board etc. Good experience & will look good on my CV, but it's unpaid & is taking over my entire life, which isn't so great!

No chance of better (or should i say - any) equipment. My classroom is in a converted barn. Don't even think there's a plug socket in there.


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## elfman (Oct 18, 2011)

Hellsbells said:


> Think it'll take me longer than a few months to get the hang of this - for various reasons I'm practically having to design the entire course myself as the college have never done anything similar before - dif curriculum/dif exam board etc. Good experience & will look good on my CV, but it's unpaid & is taking over my entire life, which isn't so great!
> 
> No chance of better (or should i say - any) equipment. My classroom is in a converted barn. Don't even think there's a plug socket in there.



Yeh, it sounds a lot harder than my job. I'm in the same position of having to design the course as well though as I'm working in a brand new kindergarten and most of the staff don't speak any English, so I'm having to teach them too and all the kids.

Good luck anyway


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## Shippou-Sensei (Oct 18, 2011)

i never get the timing right.

they are useful in many cases  but i will often  just  not  do them if it's  a subject  i know well.    i never bother with them for my introduction to html lessons   but  it did help with   the introduction  to programming  lesson.


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## Hellsbells (Oct 18, 2011)

Observation over  Waiting for feedback now.... 

Don't think it went too badly. Although only 5 of the 14 students turned up which did kind of screw my intrictately prepared lesson plan a little. Had spent ages planning various team games & pair work with strong learners working with weak learners - had to abandon it all. Have no IDEA what the observor thought. I hate that. And I hate waiting.


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