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3676. To Improve Our Lessons: The Importance of Lesson Planning

  On the last post I told you some practical things on lesson planning which hopefully might help you out, my dear colleague teacher, or you may be a prospective one, or a novice or rookie one. There may be several different situations and circumstances.  As well right here and now I join in some way all the victims of recent floods here in our dear Spain – it has been so terrible, as you may have learned from the news. Poor people, and I pray for them as well. It’s been the worst natural catastrophe of the century in Spain. A lot of volunteers are helping out there.  Let’s carry on with our usual work.  Lesson planning is so paramount so as to have better and efficient lessons in class. And the teacher may pass on so much – if he or she is well prepared and mature. The students have to hear good English in class: a lot from their teacher – better if they are native speakers, otherwise we have to set an example and learn more and more, plus they can listen to class audios and watch cla
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3675. What I Do to Plan Lessons I Wish They Be Efficient?

  Lesson planning, you asked? You, like I do, may think that that is essential to teach efficient lessons. You may also be a second or foreign language teacher.  Today I’m telling you something of what I do, just in case it helps you out.  When I sit to plan a lesson, first I think about my dear students and what they do need, and perhaps also what they may be expecting. And then I specify a couple of aims and write them down at the beginning of the lesson plan, at the top.  Even sometimes I let my students – and I teach adults but the same may be applied to teenagers I guess – know what those two goals are – also for them to become more aware and more involved in the class. The more I get them involved in their own learning English, the more they will learn, sure thing!  So I first think how things are going on my lessons and try to solve those possible problems.  And the body of the lesson plan includes stuff where I have my students speak a lot, a lot, a lot. They have and need to p
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3674. Can Your Students Follow You in Class or They Are on the Moon?

  You may be a second or foreign language teacher, like me. I would like to tell you today about clear messages in class so your dear students may understand you.  It’s well-known that you may speak to them in a bit above their level of the target language, for example English in my case. In that way they will understand much of the messages and will likely learn new vocab and new grammar – a drop above their English level, as I said.  On these new school year first lessons I’m teaching I can observe whether my students can follow me or otherwise not, and I try and speak a little above their level – well, sometimes quite much. The intake language thus must be finely tuned in at more or less certain level.  Also as I said I have to convey clear messages, for example clear instructions to carry out such and such activities in class. Otherwise the class becomes a pandemonium – a mess, in other words.  Clear messages I said. As well a temptation I have to fight against is to talk to them i
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3673. Learning to Learn in the Classroom

  Is motivation in the classroom important for our students? Yep, it is indeed, but there are other crucial factors, as you may know.  For sure the lesson cannot be boring and our students would get drowsy like sheep, but also we have to consider other points so as to have efficient lessons.  I say it because when a student – either a kid or an adult – gets so involved and plunged into learning about some issue, well then that student may become an expert at that topic, and for him or her it may be that interesting.  I think we have to help our dear students create and make up working habits. Then, it’s more likely they will like the school subject we teach.  Schools are not amusement parks, as Spanish teacher, philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri puts.  Our subject and its presentation in class must be interesting, competent, and professional, yet we ought not to seek motivation as the most important point in class.  I have met teachers that with their commitment in and out of the
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3672. Are They Students or Slaves in the Classroom?

  Our students, kids or adults, need to be taught and educated in liberty. No free students, no growing up and developing in a right way.  Obviously you teacher may have set a few class rules at the school year beginning, and they are necessary, but you may have set not many of them, the necessary ones for working, learning, self-improving.  If you teacher are like a class cop or sergeant, and have your students caught in a stiff fist, when those students – for example kids – feel they are not under your eyes, well, they then could behave mischievously and do bad.  When I taught kids quite many years ago I was told by the school assistant principal that, ultimately, my students were free to do what they thought more appropriate. I had to have my students wish to learn and work, but ultimately they keep being free!  It’s like raising our children: we also have to educate them in freedom.  Otherwise if we do not have them face life and everyday happenings little by little, they will grow
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3671. Flexible Teachers Hit the Jackpot

  We do need flexible teachers. Flexibility may be a good characteristic of a good teacher. In no way do I mean you don’t have to be a constant teacher, plus a committed one. The point is that we teachers treat people, treat persons.  Last post I told you what could be a possible lesson for the first day lesson of a new school year. Namely, it’s what I’ve planned for my first lessons at the three centers where I teach English to adults.  But also I consider that that very first day something else may pop up in class and I’ve got to change the lesson planning. And nothing wrong and serious may then happen.  The good teacher has to be flexible, I have to be so, if I wish to teach my students well. If we dealt with screws, well, then we would have to make all of them the same. But we treat people. Fortunately.  When teaching kids twenty-something years ago I tried hard to follow the lesson planning, but I was told that sometime we could skip and spare a lesson, and take the students - boy
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3670. The Importance of a New School Year Very First Lesson

  Now I’m presenting what could be a first lesson, now that we are starting a new school year. I hope something from all this may help you out, whatever foreign or second language level you teach. In my case I teach English to adults from some false beginner to upper intermediate levels, namely from some A2 to C1.  All this may be even something beautiful, because we treat people, persons, and each and every one is unique, and we teachers may be influencing much on their lives: what a responsibility we have!  Something basic from this start lesson: we may address each student by looking into their eyes so they may feel they are and they are going to be treated like singular persons. That is something that has helped me a lot along my career as an English teacher, both kids and adults.  First I may introduce myself – on the running first days I will get to know their names; all this may vary in your case, obviously, depending on whom you teach; anyway I hope all this may help you out. 
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