Active Engagement in Learning!

Active Engagement in Learning!





Role playing, storytelling, drama






Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Developing a yearly plan for my education class

I received an assignment for my ED489 (Evaluation) class of developing a school year plan.  We are required to use the GDOE SY calendar 2012-13 to create lesson plans for the entire year for my content area, which is secondary ESL.  And it just hit me!  I'll be student teaching next semester and, to be honest, I'm a little nervous.  Because most of you are teachers, I was hoping you can give me (and the rest of the undergrads) some advice/insights about how to prepare for the school year.  Do most of you prepare during the summertime or do you procrastinate or try to wing it?  Also, do you use the same lesson plan every school year or change it up?  Do you strictly follow the sequence of your textbook on what you're going to teach or do you deviate from it?  Sorry, I'm still learning the ropes.  I'm a little anxious.  Thank you in advance for your input.  I know that regardless if I'm majoring in ESL, I would still have to follow the standards for my grade level and would have to create lessons that would be effective for my students.

4 comments:

  1. I remember thinking of those same questions when I first started teaching. You can't really prepare lessons during the summer because depending on what program (DI, SFA, Metgot) your school is using you won't have the proper materials to create the lesson plans. I always prepared the first 3 days of school activities such as, getting to know each other games and ice breakers. I liked doing these type of activities the first 3 days because once you start the adopted program then you really don't have time for these fun activities anymore. Every school year is different so you may use the same basic lesson plans but you modify it to fit your students that year. Remember the goal of teaching is learning, so if your students aren't learning than you need to try something different to get the concept across even if it is deviating from the script.

    Hope this helps.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Fina! Good to know that I don't have to waste my entire summer vacation on preparation.

      Delete
  2. I'm not yet teaching either, so this really helped me as well, Fina! I always thought a teacher did their school plan during the summertime, but if a teacher doesn't even have the materials that would be a bit difficult to do.

    -Kaylynne

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good point Fina, when thinking about lesson planning and classroom prep one can be overwhelmed especially for first time teachers.Spending the first couple of days getting to know your students and their interest as well as their goal is very important. You can worry about the lesson planning later but enjoy those first days of the school year with your students. Fina is right, don't be afraid to try new strategies and some thing totally different from the program your school is using. Yes, the important is learning so if one strategy is not working don't be afraid to explore other strategies to better your teaching. Most of the time we are so stuck in the mode of "i need to teach them this and that" that we tend to forget that the important thing for learning is to have fun and enjoy the lesson with your students.

    ReplyDelete