Preparation for Class Kills Me; Best Sites?

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Ivyman

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Preparation for Class Kills Me; Best Sites?
« on: March 20, 2023, 03:48:04 AM »
Hello Everyone,

Preparation for class, specifically lesson planning, just kills me.

1. I always liked it if I could just copy lesson plans, or the previous teach had the course prepared down to the minute.

Unfortunately, that is a dream.

2. Any other top websites, books, etc.?

3. Again, it takes me five hours to do a 30 minute detailed lesson plan.

I just wish there was a way to get far more efficient.

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Escaped Lunatic

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Re: Preparation for Class Kills Me; Best Sites?
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2023, 09:27:59 PM »
There are plenty of sites offering online lesson plans and suggestions.  You don't have to restrict yourself to ESL and EFL lessons (some pedants will claim these are completely different, but the core goal is to teach English to someone who communicates in another language, so the similarities will be greater than the differences).

You could also take an existing lesson plan for teaching relevant vocabulary and grammar points to younger native English speaking students and adapt it for your classes.  Yes, this will be some work, but it's better than starting with a blank piece of paper.

Without knowing tons of details about what you are teaching to what's on the syllabus, what levels of students are you dealing with, and what your school's expectations are, there's no way to give a blanket recommendation of "This is the best site to solve your problem."  Spend a couple hours searching and you should find several good candidates.  If their lessons meet the guidelines and are as good as what you were creeating from scratch, put them to use.  If they are ok, but need some work, upgrading a 3/4 ready lesson plan beats having no lesson plan.  Try to find a few different sites that have something ok and give them a try with your students.


Also, remember this critical point.  If you create a good lesson plan, you can adapt it and reuse it for other groups you are currently teaching and also use it with your next round of students.  There's a reason why many professors teaching lower level college classes do it from a folder full of very old looking pieces of paper.  Once they had a lecture worked out, there was not lot of reason not to reuse it when teaching the same class the next semester or next academic year with only minor updates in the margins until they retired.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2023, 09:39:32 PM by Escaped Lunatic »
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kitano

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Re: Preparation for Class Kills Me; Best Sites?
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2023, 12:35:34 AM »
Hello Everyone,

Preparation for class, specifically lesson planning, just kills me.

1. I always liked it if I could just copy lesson plans, or the previous teach had the course prepared down to the minute.

Unfortunately, that is a dream.

2. Any other top websites, books, etc.?

3. Again, it takes me five hours to do a 30 minute detailed lesson plan.

I just wish there was a way to get far more efficient.

A good way to be more efficient is use a template. Write down the lesson aims and have something basic like

45 minute lesson

5m: Intro
5m: Warmer
10m: present language
5m: basic excercises  (gap fill/multiple choice, etc.)
10m: productive excercise (make sentences/dialogue....)
10m : Fun activity using the language (game/interviews/role plays etc)

then you can just put your stuff in

There are loads online, the big websites like British Council and OneStopEnglish have free lesson plans that you can download and use.

Like most creative stuff it's usually finding a direction that is hard and once you are going it's actually fun