Planning your first lesson - JET Programme

Hey there. Just finished being told that New Zealand husbands (followed by Italian) are highly sought after in Japan. Yeah! I was just thinking of making a song called "I still don't have a Japanese wife", guess there is still hope. Hold off on that song for now.

Any way, I want to tell you a little about preparing for you classes (in a Foreign English teaching environment). Just so you know, I work at a High school with both a general English course and a fishery course. So here are a few tips. I can't spell it out to the details, it is highly variable.

Firstly, perhaps most importantly, know what kind of situation you are about to teach in! Best way to do this is to talk to your predecessor about the type of preparation they did for classes. For me, I will plan a class a few days in advance (and sometime on the day). Recently, I've been sitting down with everyone that is involved (same material, different classes) and making a teaching plan. However, I heard from a friend that she just finished planning months of classes in advance. See what I mean by different situations, yeah! So figure out what your getting into.

Secondly, your predecessor should have left you a nice bunch of previous lesson plans (if they are nice people). Use these to get a general idea of how a class goes down. If not, you can always ask your Japanese English Teachers that you'll teach with.

Next, when you come around to planning that first class (and all classes) don't forget the objective. What type of class is it? Oral Communication? General? Reading? Writing? Meet your objective.

Write it down! You will probably have a bunch of classes, you can't remember it all. I just write it down on scrap paper and keep it safe. Many go full on with printed templates and things (at least that is what they tell you in seminars, realistically...?). If your you're into that, then do it that way ;)

Plan for the small things. Write them down, don't forget. I try to guess how long things take and make up a 50minute period. Try have some games you can use in the case you have time to spare.

A lot of the time you may have a book that the teachers follow (ask if you use one).That is great, it can provide guidance. However, not all are great books. Adapt the lessons to make them more interesting for the students. Think about encouraging participation and what environment you want in each class. For example, a list of vocabulary is pretty boring. Learning by repetition is not exactly fun (unless you can funk it up). The same vocab can probably be learned in more interesting ways with games, worksheets, in class examples, etc. You will be teaching for at least a year, if the method is interesting for you, it will probably be interesting for the kids.

So without any more rambling i'll let you in on how my lessons go down.

Intro: Greet the students. Ask about their weekend etc, Ask new questions, introduce a new "cool English phrase".

Warm-up: I will play a English song for the students while they fill in the blanks. Quiz them on previous classes, homework check, or some game to wake them up. I mean, not all of these, but around a 10 minute warm up.

Introducing the content: Today I did a little skit with my Japanese English Teacher. I tried to involve the students by asking random students "May I borrow your pen", "Could you open the window" (new grammar). Just someway to make the new content fun. 

I always seem to have worksheet so the students can work on the new material. This can be many things from filling in blanks to writing a letter/story. 

I usually have a game that is directly related to the new content. I love involving props and stuff. Bringing dice along to class and making up a game with them turned into one of my most enjoyable classes.

I usually like to do a range of activities in the period. If there is too much pair-work, it can get sluggish, to much monologue up the front, they'll go to sleep. Too much paper work, and it can lack interest. Try balance it all out. Think about it as cutting a class into sections of pair-work, self-work, class activity, instruction and talk from the teacher. Of course, you can't segment lessons perfectly, but you can ensure it isn't too unbalanced. 

I can probably write a whole lot more. For now, that is enough. But finally, a great tip. If you want to study Japanese (or another language) try and go along to classes, small ones are preferable. Then, steal teaching methods from your teachers ;) I went along to a free Japanese lessons once a week. A whole lot of fun, and it shows you some good teaching tips.

Ask me questions. I'll answer you directly.