The more English your teaching partner can speak, the less you will do. Expect to do everything in elementary school and very little in junior high. It’s not always the case, but that’s a pretty good generalization in my opinion.
I write down what I plan to do very informally in a notebook, mostly so I can remember what I did the week before. There is no need for a proper, formal lesson plan. However when you’re starting out, it helps to over plan.
In ES Im usually in charge of everything. In JHS I just need to read what the teacher wants.
Some of my teachers give me a piece of paper with ‘Lesson plan’ and the date written on the top, having a step by step list of activities and stuff to go over for the whole lesson.
Some of my teachers say “please make a lesson on ________”. It could be a textbook chapter, or just a general topic like ‘summer holidays’ – obviously relevant right now, not always. Expect Hallowe’en, Christmas, etc.
Some of my teachers will say “Please can you make a lesson for next week”. And leave it at that. I usually dig a little and say some ideas for activities or themes and then they’ll OK one.
Some of my teachers will tell me in advance “We’re doing chapter x”, then when I get to the lesson we team teach through some exercises following the textbook and doing activities.
Sometimes they’ll say “I heard you did x with _____sensei, can we do that?” Sometimes this is with a lesson I’ve made, sometimes with a plan I’ve been given.
Some of the teachers will say “we have a lesson today”, that’s it. Those lessons I’ll usually just read out new vocab and then read through the example text. The teacher then goes over the grammar while I stand there and look around the class, look out the window… These are my least favourite.
This is all the same Senior High School btw. Depending on your teachers style, the age of your students, your own ability, what the students are doing at that point, what time of year it is, the phase of the moon, etc, etc, etc. It could be anything. Some SHS ALTs make lessons like me and T1 sometimes, some of us are simply tape machines, you won’t know till you get to your school to be honest. I have a mixture and that’s OK. We’re assistants. I’m not too great at planning lessons yet so every time would be a bit much, but the tape recorder lessons are preeeeetty dull…
6th year academic HS here. I write a curriculum plan at the start of the school year and get it approved by the other teachers, then give them a lesson plan about a week before we get in the classroom with it. We do the same lesson with 7 different classes so it’s worth getting it right. ESID but if you’re in HS, especially an academic one, you’re going to do better with lesson plans than without.
To begin with, having a curriculum plan means that you can at least say that you intend your students to have learned something by the end of the year. Ideally, you will have units, by the end of each of which, they will have learned several things. This means that when it’s time to write a test, you’re not gonna be like “uh time to test them onnnnn ENGLISH” or on the content of your assorted random cool lessons. You can use the test to check both whether you successful taught them the things you said you would, and secondly who really understood, and which students didn’t get it. It also lets you gain the confidence of your coworkers that you’re actually doing it job and convinces your students that your lessons are going somewhere. This is especially important in academic schools because while students like fun lessons, what they want from school is to learn something that will help them in their life, and on the entrance exams. At the end of the term, of your students had fun, improved their English, and grew as people, they will view your class as important. Finally, having a curriculum plan makes it a lot easier to plan each individual lesson because you can answer questions about what you need to achieve in each lesson, and have a general idea of what the lesson will be a long way in advance.
Lesson plans themselves are basically for budgeting time so you know you can actually finish everything in time, and communicating with JTEs. Planning a lesson you can’t actually finish is obviously an issue. It’s also awkward if you only have about half a lesson worth of material. It’s also disappointing if your activities don’t work as intended, or your JTEs have unresolvable issues with the lesson after you already started teaching it. If they have the plan in advance they can give you feedback about what they think will work and what won’t. Sometimes they’re wrong, but here’s the thing. If you can’t convince them of the lesson before you get in the classroom, it’s not gonna work anyway. You’re either going to have to alter the lesson or politely convince them that your idea will work unless dragging an adult human kicking and screaming through one hour of education is your idea of fun. A bonus of having a bit of paper with the whole lesson written on it is that when you feel like trash and cannot for the life of your remember how your 1st period class was meant to work, you can just look at the bit of paper for 30 seconds and then get rolling. In like 95% of lessons, that doesn’t matter, but when it does matter, it’s a big deal.
In conclusion, in academic HS situations, writing lesson plans is like taking a shower. Yeah, technically you don’t have to do it, but when everyone at work smells your stinky lessons, they’ll wish you did.
4 comments
The more English your teaching partner can speak, the less you will do. Expect to do everything in elementary school and very little in junior high. It’s not always the case, but that’s a pretty good generalization in my opinion.
I write down what I plan to do very informally in a notebook, mostly so I can remember what I did the week before. There is no need for a proper, formal lesson plan. However when you’re starting out, it helps to over plan.
In ES Im usually in charge of everything. In JHS I just need to read what the teacher wants.
Some of my teachers give me a piece of paper with ‘Lesson plan’ and the date written on the top, having a step by step list of activities and stuff to go over for the whole lesson.
Some of my teachers say “please make a lesson on ________”. It could be a textbook chapter, or just a general topic like ‘summer holidays’ – obviously relevant right now, not always. Expect Hallowe’en, Christmas, etc.
Some of my teachers will say “Please can you make a lesson for next week”. And leave it at that. I usually dig a little and say some ideas for activities or themes and then they’ll OK one.
Some of my teachers will tell me in advance “We’re doing chapter x”, then when I get to the lesson we team teach through some exercises following the textbook and doing activities.
Sometimes they’ll say “I heard you did x with _____sensei, can we do that?” Sometimes this is with a lesson I’ve made, sometimes with a plan I’ve been given.
Some of the teachers will say “we have a lesson today”, that’s it. Those lessons I’ll usually just read out new vocab and then read through the example text. The teacher then goes over the grammar while I stand there and look around the class, look out the window… These are my least favourite.
This is all the same Senior High School btw. Depending on your teachers style, the age of your students, your own ability, what the students are doing at that point, what time of year it is, the phase of the moon, etc, etc, etc. It could be anything. Some SHS ALTs make lessons like me and T1 sometimes, some of us are simply tape machines, you won’t know till you get to your school to be honest. I have a mixture and that’s OK. We’re assistants. I’m not too great at planning lessons yet so every time would be a bit much, but the tape recorder lessons are preeeeetty dull…
6th year academic HS here. I write a curriculum plan at the start of the school year and get it approved by the other teachers, then give them a lesson plan about a week before we get in the classroom with it. We do the same lesson with 7 different classes so it’s worth getting it right. ESID but if you’re in HS, especially an academic one, you’re going to do better with lesson plans than without.
To begin with, having a curriculum plan means that you can at least say that you intend your students to have learned something by the end of the year. Ideally, you will have units, by the end of each of which, they will have learned several things. This means that when it’s time to write a test, you’re not gonna be like “uh time to test them onnnnn ENGLISH” or on the content of your assorted random cool lessons. You can use the test to check both whether you successful taught them the things you said you would, and secondly who really understood, and which students didn’t get it. It also lets you gain the confidence of your coworkers that you’re actually doing it job and convinces your students that your lessons are going somewhere. This is especially important in academic schools because while students like fun lessons, what they want from school is to learn something that will help them in their life, and on the entrance exams. At the end of the term, of your students had fun, improved their English, and grew as people, they will view your class as important. Finally, having a curriculum plan makes it a lot easier to plan each individual lesson because you can answer questions about what you need to achieve in each lesson, and have a general idea of what the lesson will be a long way in advance.
Lesson plans themselves are basically for budgeting time so you know you can actually finish everything in time, and communicating with JTEs. Planning a lesson you can’t actually finish is obviously an issue. It’s also awkward if you only have about half a lesson worth of material. It’s also disappointing if your activities don’t work as intended, or your JTEs have unresolvable issues with the lesson after you already started teaching it. If they have the plan in advance they can give you feedback about what they think will work and what won’t. Sometimes they’re wrong, but here’s the thing. If you can’t convince them of the lesson before you get in the classroom, it’s not gonna work anyway. You’re either going to have to alter the lesson or politely convince them that your idea will work unless dragging an adult human kicking and screaming through one hour of education is your idea of fun. A bonus of having a bit of paper with the whole lesson written on it is that when you feel like trash and cannot for the life of your remember how your 1st period class was meant to work, you can just look at the bit of paper for 30 seconds and then get rolling. In like 95% of lessons, that doesn’t matter, but when it does matter, it’s a big deal.
In conclusion, in academic HS situations, writing lesson plans is like taking a shower. Yeah, technically you don’t have to do it, but when everyone at work smells your stinky lessons, they’ll wish you did.