Preparing a lesson

Normally I prepare my lessons after marking so that my planning responds to my marking. This weekend I have left my marking in school.

Last year I aimed to plan Sunday evening. Even though I work better under pressure, I think that I am often tired by that point. With a minimum of socialising today, and with my chores completed, I find myself in the early evening somewhat desiring to have planned already.

Fortunately, I have clear ideas of what I want to plan, and how I want to plan them. I intend the change the rhythm of my lessons, and to see the response in my classes.

My Year 11s are continuing their spoken language work, and I will insert some FB analysis for them, too. In addition, I will give them a weekly timed essay, or so, that I need to present.

Next, I need my Year 7s and 8s to have a distinctive run at close writing skills (sentence rearranging and so on…)

My Year 9s, I think, need to address some creative writing, particularly with some word association bubbles.

My Year 10s see me observing them. And this is really the focus of my post. I had ideas of what I would do, but these need to change because of school life and missed lessons. My lesson focus will be entirely on Curley’s Wife, and how a character is presented.

Following my lesson observation from before, I want to deepen the starter somewhat. So, a L/O with a ‘choose the top 3 words’ perhaps would be useful. Or definitions of three words.  

How can we evaluate the introduction of a character?
How…

Following this, I think that we can look to find a particular section, and will evaluate for language in that section.

Homework will be to evaluate a situation where a man and a woman have been treated differently. 3 paragraphs, 15 sentences .Rpatz example if necessary.

I might tell them the ‘top dog’ story, and have them explain why not. Need to explain the connotations.  This could be part of homework – leading into first few questions. Will use the book closing lark.

Then, analysis of questions. Following this, pyramid plenary/rewriting L/O.

The above, in italics, are my notes. My thoughts on the lesson have already been mulled, and tomorrow (especially on my morning walk) the order and the criteria will be evaluated. The amount that I will write on a page, though, is yet to be established.

I think, too,  I might list hinge questions on the lesson plan (and/or/have them as my lesson plan?)

One thing is this: it still takes me several hours to refine the planning of my lessons, even after I know what I want to do, and how to do it.

I think back, indulgently, to the PGCE, and driving to my school to teach 2-3 lessons. Each lesson had been planned for hours beforehand, and I was excited to teach it. Having that time for each lesson was a wonderful experience. I’ll never have that time again. However, my students deserve each lesson to exhaust them as much as it exhausts me.

Save, of course, for the notion that time and energy are finte. That, and that both those things don’t dissipate evenly through time. Just because I have some energy now doesn’t meant that I might not wake up in a few days time feeling fatigued.

It is for the wordy sentences above that I think that I don’t want my kids taught by someone who:

a)      Has no energy.

b)      Has no imaginative life.

c)       Has no intellectual investment in the lesson.

We’ll see if those things remain peaked for the rest of the term.