EPT
On October 07 2012 08:43 TimmyMac wrote:
How much time do you generally spend planning per lesson? Not marking and following up etc, just the planning bit.
How much time do you generally spend planning per lesson? Not marking and following up etc, just the planning bit.
This varies a tremendous amount and it's difficult to come up with any type of average. If it's a lesson which doesn't require much prep to begin with and it's been taught before with success, then a few minutes might be fine. Some lessons, especially if they are completely new could take over 10 hours to plan for a 40 minute block.
Just making photocopies alone can a while... maybe 5 minutes if the machine is available and over an hour if you are having trouble finding one that is working and not heavily occupied. Preparing auxiliary materials takes a while if you have students with special accommodations such as copies of class notes or separate versions of worksheets/activities. Modifying a lesson based on the recent performance of your students is also something you theoretically should do for each and every lesson.
If you aren't already intimately familiar with the material you should also study it some more. By intimately familiar I mean you not only can do well on a test on the topic, but have thought about how students will try to learn the material, and what likely misconceptions will arise.
If there is any equipment you need to prepare (common in science) then that also requires some time, and you can probably only do it during certain windows of opportunity since you need access to equipment/rooms that are often occupied by other classes.
In other words, it takes a lot of time to do your planning if you do it right, but it also gets much faster with experience if you are repeating lessons for the most part.
