Buckland Weekly #13: The secret of good comedy

I'll return to the differences in Chinese and Western approaches with my next post. This post has been prompted by a number of the current orientation group asking a very similar question - how do you get the timing right in your lesson?

The secret of good teaching is the same as the secret of good comedy – timing. We're in the middle of the orientation and training period for new teachers at the moment so I'm seeing lots of demonstration lessons and timing is the issue that's causing the most problems. Clearly timing problems can go both ways. Lessons can run too long or too short but the recent problems have all been in one direction. Most of the teachers lessons have run too short. For some it's been a matter of a few minutes but others have been as much as 50% too short. There are two things we need to consider. Why are they running short and what can we do about it?

Without naming any names lets list a few of the issues that have led to short lessons this week. We can analyse them later.

1. The planned material isn't enough for the length of the lesson.
2. The teacher has unrealistic ideas about how long tasks will take.
3. The class are stronger than expected and complete tasks more quickly than expected.
4. The teacher delivers the material too quickly.
5. The teacher doesn't spend enough time on comprehension checking or reinforcement activity.
6. The plan is fine but when delivering it the teacher misses out something that was planned.
7. Things don't work as expected and the teacher panics.

These divide into two groups – problems with the planning and problems with the execution. Let's begin with the planning stage. Most of our new teachers are very new to the profession, many have never stood in front of a class before so good planning is vital. I've been teaching for a long time but when I plan a lesson on a new topic I still prefer to go back to basics. My routine goes like this.

1. Have the concept for the lesson.
2. Think about it for a while. Examine the idea to see if there is enough that can be done with it, especially looking at what language aims can be achieved with this topic.
3. Write a very quick and very rough running order outline. At this stage all I'm considering is what kind of task would make a good introduction to the lesson, how I'll progress from there to the main task of the lesson, what kind of task would make a good main task, how I can end the lesson. Note I didn't specify any detail – just the type of task. At this stage I may be thinking of an information gap task or a discussion task or something as simple as a game of hangman. Essentially it's a bullet point version of the lesson concept.
4. Flesh it out a little. Add some detail to the tasks. Estimate approximate timings for how long each thing should take and make sure they add up to 40 minutes (the length of a Chinese Middle School Lesson.)
5. Write the detailed plan, adjusting the timings as I add more detail.
6. Run through each individual part of the lesson to check the timings. Make tasks more or less complex if they need adjustment.
7. If the whole lesson is too short by more than a minute or two, think of an extension activity that can be used as needed.
8. Rewrite the plan with newest timings.
9. Repeat steps 6 to 8 as required.

This should take care of issues at the planning stage. The crucial thing is to look realistically at the timings for each stage. Let's give a more concrete example.

If you are, for example, planning a lesson on visiting London, there are various types of activity you could use with different level classes. You could, for example, brainstorm places they know in London. That's what I'd write on my bullet point version but just how long it will take will depend on how you set it up (and remember the set up time is included in the timings!). You could toss a ball around and ask each student for something they could see in London and write the answers as they come. That's unlikely to take more than two minutes to generate a dozen answers. Alternatively you could put them into groups and give them two minutes to write as many as they can think of, then go from group to group getting ideas and writing them on the board. That's a little slower and needs more set up and might take five or six minutes. Or, instead of going group to group you could get one person from each group to come to the board and write their answers with the groups racing against each other. When you add on time to mark it, that's about ten minutes. Which one you use depends partly on the class and partly on how much time you have. Whichever it is, you need to get the estimate at least approximately right. If you think a two minute activity will take ten then your lesson will run short.

What about the delivery of the lesson? Even the best planned lesson can fall to pieces if the execution isn't up to scratch. The most common problem here is that the level of the class hasn't been properly assessed and they complete tasks much more quickly than you thought they would. There is only one good solution to this. Make sure, when you plan the lesson, that you have one or maybe two related extension tasks that can be used or omitted as required. This also helps if you have some groups that complete tasks quickly and some that complete them slowly – you can give the task just to the quicker groups.

The other common errors in the list at the top of the page are all down to the teacher and need adjustments in the teachers style. If you deliver the material too quickly – either by speaking so fast that you sound as if you are on drugs or by moving tasks on too swiftly and not giving students enough time to answer then the solution is simple. Slow down. Learn to pause. Learn that silence isn't necessarily a bad thing. Give the students time to answer.

As for comprehension checking and repetition, in a Chinese classroom with up to eighty kids you need to do a lot of it. Don't ask the question “Do you understand what you have to do?” ask the question “What do you have to do”, and ask more than one student. Don't just ask the kid with his or her hand up in the front row. Pick a few students from around the class. When you write and drill a new vocabulary item, don't just write it and say it, get the class to say it. More than once. Then get a couple of individual students to say it. Not only are these important techniques to verify understanding, they also help with the pacing of your lesson. Without them an activity supposed to take five minutes might take thirty seconds.

The last two go hand in hand. Over the years I've seen this happen more times than I can count. It's happened to me. It will happen to you. You have planned a lesson with accurate timings, you have worked it out to the last detail and delivered it perfectly and as you approach the final summary you glance at the clock and realise that you are ten minutes short. What, you ask yourself, as panic grips your heart, has gone wrong? You look down at the lesson plan and realised that you have accidentally left out a whole section somewhere in the middle. There are other things that could have caused the underrun but whatever the cause you are at the end and have nothing left to teach.

There are a few things that you can do. If the missed out section is reasonably self contained you can go on to teach it anyway. Nobody in the class will know that wasn't the plan all along. Or, if you have planned well and have extension activities then you can use them. Again, no one will even notice. I also like to keep a number of adaptable games in mind that I can throw in if I need them and once again they won't notice. What they will notice is the rabbit-in-the-headlights panic in your eyes if you let the setback get to you. You have to learn not to let the fear show and if you are well prepared with back up plans in mind then the fear won't show. A momentary hesitation is all there needs to be as you switch to a new track.

And that's it. Sometimes, whatever you do, the lesson will run too long or too short. You just need to be prepared for it.