The TEFLer - “I’m a bit overwhelmed”

The TEFLer is a fortnightly companion for teachers of English, written by Simon Pearlman.

The initial adrenaline of the new academic year has probably faded somewhat and many of us are left with a feeling of overwhelm; too many students to remember, too many classes to plan and not enough time for us. Is this it for the rest of the year? What can we do about it? How can we help our students and ourselves have a better time of it? Read on for ideas about how to help ourselves more.

We know we need to prioritise our own well-being by making time for ourselves. ?If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of others either and it becomes harder and harder to work effectively in the classroom and even harder to enjoy ourselves. Maybe we really value physical exercise, maybe cooking is a hobby or perhaps it’s reading, or watching films or being with friends and family. So often, the pressures of work, especially around planning can take up far too much time leaving us with little time to do the things we need to do for ourselves, for our sense of equilibrium, for our mental health. We need to be aware of the dangers of burnout and we need our work to be sustainable. How can we do it?

One place to start is to look at our planning processes. It’s not a magic wand and won’t change everything but planning is something we do a lot so it’s worth spending some time looking at our processes and seeing if we can become a little more efficient.

How much time do you spend planning? Would you like it to be less? We can think about block planning units and then a quicker individual lesson plan, this can increase our feelings of security around our work, knowing that we’re covering what’s necessary in the time given and, crucially, it reduces our time spent working.

Planning time has a habit of being elastic and filling whatever available time we have. Try designating specific, limited time to planning and see if that works for you. Maybe in a couple of hours on a Monday morning you can plan all you classes. Play with it and see what works well enough for you.

Monthly planning, unit planning?

Planning several classes together gives us an overview and helps us see that we’re covering the material within the time given, it also makes our lesson planning so much quicker. Let’s look at our primary classes more closely and making a unit plan.

In our primary books, there are normally 9 units to cover and 9 months to work from mid-September to mid-June. Handily that means we have about a month to cover a unit. Do be careful though, what else do you need to bear in mind? Most books have a starter unit, there’s local holidays, maybe there are big school events or exam days or festivities lessons to consider too. How long does that leave us? It’s worth plotting it out just to check but usually it means a minimum of six lessons per unit (and the teachers’ book normally says at least ten lessons a unit.)

There clearly isn’t enough time to do everything in the book, nowhere near, so we need to make choices. How do we decide our priorities? Perhaps the best place to start is to ask ourselves “What are the questions and answers I want my primary students to be better at when we finish the unit?” Then we keep whatever helps us and put to one side the things we don’t need to do. Of course we want to make sure we have a balance of skills but we probably focus most on vocabulary, grammar and speaking.

Planning to cover a unit in six lessons will also give you some wiggle room going forward, you’ll hopefully have a spare lesson. Maybe you could use the spare lessons to catch up, go over things again, a special creative time, a games class, whatever!

The unit plan is clearly just an outline plan and doesn’t replace the lesson plan. It’s also that “a plan”; we never really know what’s going to happen in the class and, of course, each group, each day is different, we need to adjust and adapt to the students.

We need to think about quality over quantity; it’s better to cover less material well than run through lots of material badly.

Each mini-plan includes a routines and recycling section as well as a game at the end. Routines and a recycling activity gives us essential moments in every class to use previously seen material, not just from the last class, the last week or the last month, it gives us the chance to have revisit everything they’ve come across in their learning. We will consider this in more detail in a future edition of The TEFLer, it’s a big one! Games are there too, even a bad class can be rescued by a game at the end. There is also homework setting and checking to be done as well as a review lesson at the end of the unit, this could be time for testing too if that is appropriate.

So here’s the outline unit plan over six lessons…

An example unit plan

Unit aim (Questions and answers):

1.??????????? What’s the matter? E.g. I’ve got a headache. I feel sick/etc.

2.??????????? What should I do? E.g. You should go drink water.

?

Lesson 1: Vocab 1, Routines and recycling, Vocab and song (PB p 28), Game

Lesson 2: Vocab 1 and Grammar 1, Routines and recycling, Vocab and song review, Story (PB p 29/30), Homework (AB p. 28 vocab), Game

Lesson 3: Vocab 1 and Grammar 1, Routines and recycling, Homework review, Vocab and song review, AB exercises (AB p 28, 29, 30), Charades “What’s the matter’”

Lesson 4: Vocab 2, Routines and recycling, Vocab and rap (PB p 31), Homework (AB p31 and finish 28-30), Game

Lesson 5: Vocab 2 and Grammar 2, Routines and recycling, Homework review, Listening activity (PB p 29/30), Game?????

Lesson 6: Unit review/test?, Role play – At the doctors?????????????????

The Lesson Plan

You have your structure from the monthly plan and then you need to take the lesson plan to be a bit more detailed, it should be quicker as you’ve already done a lot of the thinking.

The lesson is an hour, start with the routines and the recycling activity, move into the material for the class and then finish with a game.

This is an example from the above unit form the monthly plan, this is lesson one, the lesson is one hour. Our aim is to introduce the first set of vocabulary in the unit. The students often really enjoy the songs and gives them an opportunity to use the vocab in context, hopefully the target questions are in there too to set the scene for the next class.

?

16.00-16.05??????? Coming in, settling down – names and establishing the management system

16.05-16.10??????? A few routines – days, dates, weather

16.10-16.20 ????? Recycling activity – Rock, paper, scissors with projected slides

16.20-16.45??????? Class material

1. What’s the matter? Intro with flashcards

2. Flashcard games to practice vocab (with Q and A)

3. Song – listen and hold up flashcards, listen and repeat line by line, sing (and record?)

4. Vocabulary activity in the Activity book (if time)

?

16.45-16.50??????? Set homework? - finish vocab activity

16.50-17.00??????? Game to finish – Board scrabble

The aim of this edition of The TEFLer is to help you reduce planning time and increase planning efficiency. It should also help us feel secure that we’re doing everything we need to in the time that we need to do it and therefore help us feel more relaxed. It should also help us to free up more time to do the things that we need and want to do for ourselves. We really do need to look after ourselves and that includes making time for things that we enjoy and value. Do we live to work or work to live? Where are our priorities? How can we make the job work with our lives?

Do feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section and feel free to share with us. You can also get in touch with me, Simon, at [email protected]

And if feel like you could use more ideas about working with younger learners, join our next Teaching Younger Learners course. It’s a 3-week, online course which will give you strong methodology and a huge number of practical ideas to use in class. There’s a combination of self-study on our platform, lively discussion forums, weekly live group seminars on zoom and a 1:1 tutorial at the end of the course.

See our website https://www.activelanguage.net/train-to-teach-english/3-teaching-younger-learners/ for more information and to book your place or contact us at [email protected]

The next Teaching Younger Learners course starts on Monday, October 21, don't delay, apply today!

And happy TEFLing!