First, I look through the unit I want to work with. I don’t usually plan one lesson but try to build up how I want to teach that given unit. I try to come up with ideas to lead the lesson in, mainly building on the ideas of the Teacher’s book, or the topics and pictures presented in the book. I try to find pictures on the internet connected to that topic that grab my students’ attention and make my students want to talk about that topic.
Usually, when we start a new unit, I create a quick menti task (it is really quick, it takes 5 minutes the max) with which I can hear my students’ previous knowledge or ideas about the given topic.
What I really think over thoroughly is what I want my students to write down into their notebooks as these are the things I have to include in my slides (I try to write on the blackboard as little as possible as my handwriting is not the most legible). Also, I try to lead them through the steps with my ppts, so I mostly include the course book’s page and task numbers, so even if their attention (or internet connection) drops for a few seconds, they will still know what we’re doing.
I include my notes (= guiding questions, procedure, comments, etc.) in the “Notes” part of Power Point – with off-line teaching, they are really helpful as everything that I need for a smoothly going lesson is included there. With online teaching it’s a bit more complicated and I try to memorize as much as I can (or if I fail to do that, I use Alt+Tab to jump between the different windows I use). Sometimes I put my “reminders” on the slides – a small picture of menti, Jamboard, whatever, so that I don’t forget where I wanted to include these tasks.
I’ve just learnt a new trick from one of my teacher trainees: he scanned in the different pages from the book and “cut out” the tasks they were working with. This way the students could see where they were and he could include the solutions as well (again, very helpful with online teaching when something goes wrong with the technology). With some course books you can get the iTools or something similar where it’s already prepared for you by the publishers.
I spend a lot of time looking for the pictures and this is my kind of brainstorming part – how I can include the best pictures I find that will engage my students. Step by step the whole structure of the unit builds up and then I try to find the points where a lesson will end. At those points I include the homework tasks so that they can see it, not just hear it; and also the warm-up ideas for the following lessons. With this, fewer ICQs and CCQs are needed in my lesson. Finally, I look for practice tasks on the Internet to make my lessons more fun, e.g. on Kahoot, Learningapps, Wordwall, or some YouTube videos. I include the links either on new slides or in the Notes part of my ppt.