Summer work
Aug. 3rd, 2010 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ennierdaToday has been Lesson Planning day.
In years past, I have failed miserably at summer prep. You know - I ended up at the beach instead, or watching movies, or just farting around on the internet. Part of it was certainly the distractions that summer offers, but part of it was just intimidation over how to begin such a big job. It was a lot easier to plan week-by-week than taking a look at the big picture. After five years of experience in a school where I had to come up with the curriculum, Religion being unregulated by any outside body, I have got a bit better idea on how to plan a course and am determined to do better this summer.
First, I did some brainstorming. Then I looked over the last teacher's notes and have been reassured to find that I came up with the same ideas as her. The biggest problem with her notes is that they are not arranged into unit plans, unless you count an ENTIRE QUARTER as a unit. Therefore, since we agreed on what the course goals should be, I just need to break her notes down into units, then I can start working on actual lessons. A big decision for me is going to be: should grammar, writing and literature happen every day, maybe fifteen minutes for each, or should I include seperate "writing days" and "reading days" in each unit? The old teacher did half and half each class - starting with grammar OR writing, then ending with literature.
I'm torn on if the students should read at home. The old teacher had them do all their reading in class, on the theory that they were just going to read the cliff notes on the internet. However, she also assigned them a fair amount of writing that they did at home, so maybe doing the reading in class was a way of giving them a break. Certainly some reading needs to be done in class, to work on improving the comprehension and analytic skills. I will think on this some more.
Anyway, I'm feeling like I could have accomplished more today, but I got a start, which is more than I've ever done.
In years past, I have failed miserably at summer prep. You know - I ended up at the beach instead, or watching movies, or just farting around on the internet. Part of it was certainly the distractions that summer offers, but part of it was just intimidation over how to begin such a big job. It was a lot easier to plan week-by-week than taking a look at the big picture. After five years of experience in a school where I had to come up with the curriculum, Religion being unregulated by any outside body, I have got a bit better idea on how to plan a course and am determined to do better this summer.
First, I did some brainstorming. Then I looked over the last teacher's notes and have been reassured to find that I came up with the same ideas as her. The biggest problem with her notes is that they are not arranged into unit plans, unless you count an ENTIRE QUARTER as a unit. Therefore, since we agreed on what the course goals should be, I just need to break her notes down into units, then I can start working on actual lessons. A big decision for me is going to be: should grammar, writing and literature happen every day, maybe fifteen minutes for each, or should I include seperate "writing days" and "reading days" in each unit? The old teacher did half and half each class - starting with grammar OR writing, then ending with literature.
I'm torn on if the students should read at home. The old teacher had them do all their reading in class, on the theory that they were just going to read the cliff notes on the internet. However, she also assigned them a fair amount of writing that they did at home, so maybe doing the reading in class was a way of giving them a break. Certainly some reading needs to be done in class, to work on improving the comprehension and analytic skills. I will think on this some more.
Anyway, I'm feeling like I could have accomplished more today, but I got a start, which is more than I've ever done.
