Wow-super helpful summary.  I will definitely share with this with the rest of my staff.  Thanks a bunch!

@ Virginia: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on lesson plans, as well as insights you've gained both on writing them, and also on modifying them.

I have to follow the book and CD more than I thought I had to.  Which is kind-of nice, but the videos given in the CD for 5th graders are really cheesy.

That's why I'm here!  To find better video alternatives!

i am overwhelmed at the thought of lesson planning. somehow i have not yet had to put anything together, i just cant wait to get into a routine with it all. heres to hoping it goes smoothly...at leatst at first til i get the hang of things!

It's definitely overwhelming at first!  And it's hard, not knowing your students!
And don't worry.  Some days you will bomb.  We all have our on days and our off days.  Try to get a feel for your students and try to get to know them. =)

I'm still getting into the groove with my students.  It's my 3rd day.

I felt that you are absolutly right on this one.  A planning a lesson plan is not a walk in the park.  It takes to master to plot out a effective lesson plan.  Thanx for this post, it is really gonna help me

ji

There have been quite a few posts lately about lesson planning and sharing or not sharing lessons... I thought I'd perhaps move the discussion to its own thread.

First off, yes I have uploaded a lot of lesson plans, have given multiple presentation about how to plan lessons, almost wrote a textbook (I backed out so that I could wander around the world instead) and have shared ideas with people who randomly msg me on msn and say "I have a class in 15 minutes that I didn't know about... what do I do now?"

I'm not an expert at this - I still have classes that tank completely. It's all a part of the learning process.

When I was teaching in Canada, creating a lesson plan (or complete module) was not something I could measure in hours, but in days or weeks. And that is the main reason why I share, and encourage others to share (and thank people like jellomando for sharing). The more trading that happens, the better it is for everybody, with the understanding that you can never take a lesson (even your own past lesson plan) and use it as is... you MUST modify it and make it your own. If not, the chances for success are lessened (in my experience anyway...)

But I digress... Just to give you an idea of the thought processes that I go through when I plan a lesson - notice that it gets more hectic as it goes along.

1) Start with a topic and/or grammar notion. If you use a theme/topic (i.e. animals), you will have more leeway than if you use a grammar notion (i.e. past tense).

2) Narrow the theme down to things that interest you or that you have some prior knowledge about (different animals around the world).

3) Now, stop - and go backwards (wait... how many animals are there in the world? Do these kids even have a concept of where in the world animals come from? Maybe my starting point needs to be a mini-geography lesson?? Okay - let's go by continent and separate the animals into categories according to where they come from in the world)

4) Now, stop - and go forwards (what is my final product going to be - meaning what will the closure activity be for the students? What will the end result be? What do I expect them to learn?)

5) How will you introduce this theme to your students? You must activate their own prior knowledge and give them a context to work in (hmmm, how about if I start each presentation with a review of the continents that we've already seen and then choose one and have a powerpoint showing animals from that continent?)

6) What is the *activity* in your lesson going to be? How will the students practice what they have acquired? (For each continent's animals, there will be a different, small, fun activity -- I'm not creating zoologists here, but giving the kids a taste of the larger world and the diversity of its fauna -- not that they will realize it at the time. These are children, let's feed the curiosity...) Hmmm, examples of activities - slapping game (hitting the picture of the animal when I say the name - encourages word recognition through reading and listening), colouring pages, wordsearches, a modified Yut game, matching/memory game, learning a penguin dance....

7) What are my resources? (okay... I can modify jellomando's geography lesson and bring it down to an elementary level... google images and asking friends for pictures of themselves with strange animals around the world will work for making the powerpoints... Discovery Kids has tools to create wordsearches and criss-cross words... there are Yut games at the chun-won store that I can modify... abcteach.com has a whole slew of Amazon animal colouring pages... bogglesworldesl (aka lanternfish) might have  something.... youtube has a lot of random animal videos....)

Now... I need to start making the activities. If I just take Africa as an example -- I have a powerpoint with pictures of animals, then we can play the slap game, then there's a wordsearch. In the next lesson, we will review the animals, then I can show them a 5-minute video of random African animal images that I found on youtube.... WAIT... what will they do during the video? Sleep? Noo... need a simple worksheet with a few animal names - lion, giraffe, elephant, springbok - and every time they see that animal, they have to colour a square next to the name... yes, okay... and let's call it a Safari)

.... and so on.

This is a real thematic module that I am doing with my Grade 3 and 4 students. I haven't planned the whole thing out yet (I've done the geography, Africa, South America and Antarctica lessons so far), and it is constantly a work in progress. Once it is finally done, it will represent HOURS of work, and yes, it will be posted on waygook....

And why is this lesson plan working in my classes? Because I am building on my kids' prior knowledge (they know a few of the animal names in English, and can identify most of them in Korean), using something of interest to them and TO ME, with visual support and a variety of activities.

Finally, my school doesn't know whether I've spent 3 hours planning a class or 3 minutes... but I do.

Thank you so much for this post. I've been planning lessons for over 10 years now, in all sorts of settings, but Korea has taken me back to step 1.  I feel like a beginner all over again. This post help me sort out where to start. Thank you!

Yes, great post! I've found that it's better to include more things in your lesson plan than you expect to cover. Or maybe add an extra game / worksheet. I've already had a couple of moments where I think, "Darn, that was fast... now what?" So to avoid that I just overflow into the next lesson in case we fly through a topic or it was surprisingly easy.

i'm also new (both to korea and to teaching) and really appreciate the breakdown of how to address lesson planning. it is overwhelming at first and i find sometimes my lessons go much faster than i thought they would and sometimes the students don't even get through half the material i have. i'm hoping over time i'll get better at figuring out how long certain lessons will take.

i like the suggestion to have extra material for when they do finish early. i had that happen the other day and i ended up just having conversation and playing a game with them off the top of my head. oops..

Phonics doesnt seem to be big at my school whenever i try to teach it to the kids they just look at me with a glazed expression.  Maybe no other scholar has tried to teach it to them idk?  But thanks for the site i will definitly try to use it with my kids.  Thanks Waygook.org!

Yes, I find this post to be very helpful.  I am a young teacher with certification for grades 7-12, but I'm now teaching elementary for the first time here in Korea.  How I develop a lesson for older students (and for social studies) is very different than how your process unfolds.  Seeing your thought process is very helpful, thanks!