Between moving houses and preparing for a bigger move, I had not time to blog or to even read my blogroll. The other day I opened my feedly, saw 140 unread articles and shut it down. But I'm slowly going back to my routine and enjoying all the IATEFL reports and summaries. I have to also admit I haven't been preparing for the lessons as much as I did before. I mean I did sit down and opened the book. But often I just couldn't gather my thoughts, started to panic, search for the ideas in the Internet, search for any ideas in the Internet, making a cup of coffee... well you know how it goes.
The surprising thing for me was that my lessons weren't that bad. I would even say some of them were pretty good/successful. And then I remembered other times when I spent hours searching for the right material, typing, drawing, printing and then seeing bored faces of my students and feeling a great disappointment in myself. So what the hell happened here? What's the secret for a "good" lesson?
I guess it's time to define what the good lesson is. For me, it's how the students feel when they leave the class. They feel accomplished because the learnt something, found out something new and interesting, finally got to understand something difficult. They feel cheerful because the atmosphere in class was positive, maybe their pair work went well or they got fired up by the team game we played before. So that loud many-voices chirping exit tells me I did something good!
Now, why has it been happening lately more often? Well, as I said, I didn't have much prepared for each lesson. I mean I have a book but as a rule I always have to prepare something extra, think about all the twists and turns for usual exercises, invent something in order not to get them bored quickly and so on. This time when I didn't have anything special up my sleeve I had to really focus on what was happening in the class and use any chance to engage my students (I know it sounds strange, because that's what teachers are supposed to do in the class). So when I thought we could discuss the news a bit more in the beginning we did and when I thought something was not going well we stopped. And when I saw my students really struggling with topic/supporting sentences and getting frustrated with themselves I was like "Why the hell they need it right now, I'd better have my students sane and happy, then miserable and aware of how to write a "good paragraph".And I allowed myself to talk more, because I wanted to tell a personal story related to the topic and my students enjoyed it because (surprise) they like finding out about their teacher's life. We also played a game which we rarely do because I believe my students are "too old" for that. And surprise again - it went well. So I was alert and I was sensitive to what was happening in the class and flexible to make my students feel comfortable. All because I wasn't prepared enough.
What happens when you plan "well"? First of all, you're super excited about the activities you prepared and you like them so much you don't even consider changing them a bit. I go through my plan straight and steady as if I'm a solider marching in a parade. I'm so concerned with following the initial plan that I get very upset if we don't have time to do everything or something goes wrong. It can also have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak.
I'm not saying teachers shouldn't prepare, but now I do think once in a while we have to come to a lesson under-prepared. We have to get out of the comfort zone just to spice up our lessons and test our skills against this "risky" situation. It maybe really eye-opening as it was for me, But again it can have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak :)
Photo taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/7116109027/in/set-72157627618575084 by @JosetteLB, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
The surprising thing for me was that my lessons weren't that bad. I would even say some of them were pretty good/successful. And then I remembered other times when I spent hours searching for the right material, typing, drawing, printing and then seeing bored faces of my students and feeling a great disappointment in myself. So what the hell happened here? What's the secret for a "good" lesson?
I guess it's time to define what the good lesson is. For me, it's how the students feel when they leave the class. They feel accomplished because the learnt something, found out something new and interesting, finally got to understand something difficult. They feel cheerful because the atmosphere in class was positive, maybe their pair work went well or they got fired up by the team game we played before. So that loud many-voices chirping exit tells me I did something good!
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| "Black pencils" eltpics by @JosetteLB |
Now, why has it been happening lately more often? Well, as I said, I didn't have much prepared for each lesson. I mean I have a book but as a rule I always have to prepare something extra, think about all the twists and turns for usual exercises, invent something in order not to get them bored quickly and so on. This time when I didn't have anything special up my sleeve I had to really focus on what was happening in the class and use any chance to engage my students (I know it sounds strange, because that's what teachers are supposed to do in the class). So when I thought we could discuss the news a bit more in the beginning we did and when I thought something was not going well we stopped. And when I saw my students really struggling with topic/supporting sentences and getting frustrated with themselves I was like "Why the hell they need it right now, I'd better have my students sane and happy, then miserable and aware of how to write a "good paragraph".And I allowed myself to talk more, because I wanted to tell a personal story related to the topic and my students enjoyed it because (surprise) they like finding out about their teacher's life. We also played a game which we rarely do because I believe my students are "too old" for that. And surprise again - it went well. So I was alert and I was sensitive to what was happening in the class and flexible to make my students feel comfortable. All because I wasn't prepared enough.
What happens when you plan "well"? First of all, you're super excited about the activities you prepared and you like them so much you don't even consider changing them a bit. I go through my plan straight and steady as if I'm a solider marching in a parade. I'm so concerned with following the initial plan that I get very upset if we don't have time to do everything or something goes wrong. It can also have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak.
I'm not saying teachers shouldn't prepare, but now I do think once in a while we have to come to a lesson under-prepared. We have to get out of the comfort zone just to spice up our lessons and test our skills against this "risky" situation. It maybe really eye-opening as it was for me, But again it can have something to do with the fact that I'm a control freak :)
Photo taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/7116109027/in/set-72157627618575084 by @JosetteLB, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
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