How long does it take to prepare 1 class?

[ilduegno83]

It depends on your situation.  If you've got a good text book to use in your class, maybe you can follow the text book for 20-30 minutes of a 40 minute lesson and then have time left over for a 10 minute game.  2-3 hours spent to make a 10 minute game is way too much!

[Loki001]

I have found that when I prep my lessons seriously affects how long it takes. I like to do my planning in the morning, unless I need to make something very time consuming. But in the morning when I am fresh and a little anxious everything seems to go so much easier.

[Tenny]

 Approximately 20 mins for each lesson. But sometimes I just need 5-10 mins, since the cd-rom is well made.

[kingbee]

Research/brainstorming- anything between 10 mins and 2hrs
Making the damn PPT and finding clipart- 30 mins minimum.

[mannak101]

the first few weeks i spent entire sundays planning my lesson because i wasnt sure what they wanted from me (i dont have a textbook to guide me). now that i've figured out how everything works i can plan my week in fhe first 30-45 min of my monday morning. lol, not the best idea...but sometimes wingin' it helps you come up with better ideas. i work well under pressure though.

[Adamski]

but sometimes wingin' it helps you come up with better ideas. i work well under pressure though.

there's some truth in that. sometimes when i've made a lesson plan and im looking at it 10 minutes before class, and im thinking, 'what was i thinking? i havent prepared enough/this lesson is gonna suck', i usually come up with some great alternative ideas.

[msls]

If I have a good idea that doesn't require too many materials it doesn't take very long to plan a class, under 20 or 30mins. Making materials tends to take up the most time, and I can spend anywhere from a few minutes to several hours cutting pasting or putting things together.

Sometimes, I'm just stumped on what to do with a class and it takes me hours (or days) to even think of something.

[epwilkinson]

When I first got here it took me about an hour or two to plan a lesson ppt and make some sort of review game and worksheet. Now thanks to waygook and other websites it doesn't take me as long maybe 30 minutes.

[delta66]

 ;)
I have to admit that since I finished my TEFL last year it takes me about ten minutes to write a lesson plan. the different sites help me to prepare materials quickly and some of those lesson go over well and some don't but I do try to makes notes on what works and what does not, after class to help me with the next planning session.

[katwood10]

I think it depends on the grade level, and what kind of class you are trying to prepare. Depending on the games, it will take a while to put the ppt together, but if you are using a textbook, I wouldn't think it would take more than an hour. I think I average an hour or two per lesson per grade level.

[kate.d]

I understand that when you are first starting it takes a lot longer to plan a lesson, but 2 hours is nuts if that is a regular thing for you.  it is almost impossible for me to do much planning and when i do it backfires.  I teach one day a week at 3 schools and 2 days at one, and I never really know what lesson I am going to teach.  I have 28-9 lessons per week, almost all different.  Most schools have different books, and at one school I teach every other lesson, one school odd units, one school even, and one school every 3, though it never works out so nicely.  if i get in and whip out a nicely prepared lesson chances are the students will tell me, oh we did that one yesterday, or oh, we didn't have class yesterday so do the one before that, or oh, we finished that unit last week, do this one now.  All I can do is look over the stuff before hand a little, know the material and have some game ideas ready to go.  I teach with about 15 different people (when they show up) and none of them ever know which lesson we are on either, I have to ask the students when I get in the class. 

[astericks]

I have no textbook, so the material is on me.
Spending 2 - 3 hours on preparation for hundreds of students is minimal.
When I state each lesson, that is one lesson for the week. I prepare one lesson that I teach 16 times a week.
I'm not saying that 20 - 30 minutes isn't enough, but creativity does take time.
example:http://prezi.com/lfb9rmeqqqtn/the-news-newspaper/

[atmosphere]

How the hell do you plan a lesson in 30 minutes?!

It takes me about 3 hours. In that 3 hours I:

-Write up a PPT and insert picture.
-Make a video to play between slides. The attention span of my students is insane - a lesson just won't happen without a video.
-Write a worksheet or two.
-Create some kinda game with 20-30 questions.

[Wikkisha]

It usually takes me about 40mins to prepare for a lesson, thats with me checking facebook etc. That is if i'm using the book. If I am creating my own lesson from scratch maybe like an hour.

There are so many resources out there to use, I'm not trying to recreate the wheel.

[lsterneleftthebuilding]

20 minutes! 15 minutes! What are y'all teaching?
I have spent no less than 2-3 hours preparing each of my lessons.
I once spent 8 hours preparing one lesson. I'll never do that again, but, as I stated, I average 2-3 hours per lesson.

It's largely a matter of how many classes you teach and how many plans you are making.  In your case, I think it would be excellent if I could make one to three lessons and spend that much time making them into solid, creative classes. 

The reality though is that I fall in the 10-15 plans per week crowd, so spending 2-3 hours on each lesson would, well, not allow me to sleep or eat or read or do anything like that.  Also, I did that when I first got here and it really killed my weekends too.

In that case, I've gotten it down to about 20-40 minutes per lesson.  I'll echo tfuller on that one - how nice it would be to have a smaller planning workload..