New Teacher Wannabe: English lesson planning

Join Teachers.Net

Chatboards

Recent Groups

Mentor Teachers

MEMBERS

2 Members

+ Join Group

Pinned Posts

ALLAll Teachers

Teachers.Net LIVE CHAT Support group - Tues eve!

Featured Jobs

Full-timeMontessori Teacher

Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

TemporaryTeachers, rural schools

Peace River North School District

Full-timeHead Teacher: 2nd/3rd Grades – Mills College Children’s School

Mills College

Teaching Jobs on Teachers.Net

Featured Job special only $39!

https://teachers.net/jobs

Become a Teachers.Net sponsor!

Mentor Teachers Chatboard

New Teacher Wannabe: English lesson planning

by km

Dec 8, 2012

Mentor Teachers,

I feel like I can't teach, because I've never had success, and sometimes my lesson plans are unrealistic, cover too much material, assume students know what they don't, don't go into enough detail, make connections that are not apparent, or are just plain uninteresting due to lack of interactive activities. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about it, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I would appreciate any advice you have. One major problem I have is lack of organization and appropriate teaching materials, like worksheets, that could help me accomplish my goal.

I already have my bachelor's and a teaching certificate for my state, but I missed a lot during student teaching. Most of my Language Arts lessons came from the book, and my lesson planning wasn't very good. Sure, I could write a lesson plan and put activities, materials, procedures, descriptions, etc. in the proper format, but implementation usually ended in complete disaster. My c...See More

Comment

(1)

report post

Sara On 12/08/12, km wrote: > Mentor Teachers, Taking a subject and teaching a subject are different. Who was the best Lit/LanguageArts/English teacher you had? Why not try to model your teaching on that teacher's teaching?

There's no short answer to the long question you ask but my other suggestion would be- observe in other teachers' rooms...See MoreOn 12/08/12, km wrote: > Mentor Teachers, Taking a subject and teaching a subject are different. Who was the best Lit/LanguageArts/English teacher you had? Why not try to model your teaching on that teacher's teaching?

There's no short answer to the long question you ask but my other suggestion would be- observe in other teachers' rooms. How are you with people? How are you with the kids? Are your kid skills basically good and you just have bad material?

To your great credit is that you're trying to puzzle this through - I've seen some teachers whose lessons and classes were Boring or Bad and never in their many years of teaching did they to improve or even care that their lessons and classes were Bad or Boring.

You seem to want to get it right. Worksheets abound on the Internet - many are free and some cost a minimal amount. Punch in 'worksheets' on google and watch what comes up but it's first for me to hear that what a teacher thinks they need are more worksheets... Worksheets have lost favor with modern teaching but I still use them to a certain extent. Doesn't your school have any established curriculum for you? No teacher's guide??

My school provides me with a textbook - I don't use it because I don't like it but it would make a convenient curriculum guide if I did use it. You cannot read from the book but you found that out already. In a pinch you can have them read from the book and center your class on a discussion of what was read but you can only do that sometimes - it Won't Work everytime.

English is hard to teach - it's a hodge-podge of reading and writing. Do a grammar day once a week, not more. Do a poetry week where they read some poetry and write their own. But I can't in a single post plan out a year's worth of curriculum for you. Or - go to Amazon and buy a 'teacher's guide to teaching English/Language Art and follow it? It won't be great but it would be something to help you along.

But why not try for a teachers' assistant job or a teacher's aide? That would help you build your teaching skills. > > > This is really frustrating to me. I was great in English / > Language Arts in college, but I've found total confusion > when trying to teach it.

Dec 9, 2012

report post