The question is out: how many of you new teachers (1-5 years of teaching experience) actually over-plan your lessons? As a new teacher 12 years ago, I constantly over-planned my lessons to make sure ALL students participated, even if it meant restructuring the lesson.

In general, overplanning is a good habit to develop, especially when used as backup plans to back up parts or even an entire lesson.

However, the problem of over-planning becomes even more complicated and delicate during those unexpected moments. How do you know exactly which activity to use? And for how long? How many activities? This is where the experience and knowledge of the students and their abilities can play an important role in deciding which activities are appropriate to use. Sometimes you may be surprised by your own little spontaneity and find that you know more than you really think.

Excessive planning is part of the “hit and miss” of the new teacher. When faced with difficult classes, I constantly planned excessively because eventually I wanted to start “catching up” with the right level, motivation, and interest of my students. When I failed, I began to push into the panic zone, leading to more over-planning and general overload.

But just for the sake of discussion, let’s take the following classroom situation:

Let’s say you’ve planned a twenty-minute independent reading session for your high school students, but for some inexplicable reason, they aren’t focused. Later, you will learn (indirectly) that they do not have some of the most important reading skills to cope with the story you told them to read. More specifically, there are too many unfamiliar words and the subject of the story is quite sophisticated for her high school years. So what?

So before you start removing those backup plans, make sure you have the following in order:

1. Make sure you plan strong transitions. Observe the transitions as “glue” that holds the anterior parts together to the middle post. Weak transitions are a sure sign that you could lose some students along the way. You’ll also want to make sure the transition really serves its purpose and help connect the introduction to the main part of a lesson. Transitions don’t necessarily have to be an additional activity; it is enough to say a few sentences as “clues” to let the students understand what awaits them.

A new teacher might say to his class after predicting some of the content of the story and teaching new vocabulary, “Okay, now let’s confirm some of your predictions and see how many new vocabulary words are in context.”

2. Don’t extend too many of your originally planned activities beyond the originally set time. This is where experience will make you a pro and you will eventually be able to distinguish between real or “monetary” trial and error time. How long do students really need to do homework effectively?

To make sure you have enough time for each part, vary the time sequences. Most of your lesson should be no more than 25 minutes long, while you plan the activities for only 5 minutes or so. Plan several lessons on the same topic if necessary so you don’t have time.

3. Take careful note of where students begin to lose focus and become distracted. Ask a colleague or teacher mentor for honest, solid feedback that aims to improve your teaching. Here is a checklist of general troubleshooting areas.

4. Do you over-plan your lessons to include any differentiated instruction? For each level and skill, make sure you have at least one activity that you can pull out of a hat as needed. Write down that activity and make a note of its success. Save the experience for a later date.

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Consider the fact that perhaps the students were not focused, which is another classroom issue and requires a different set of actions.

So the question again is: how many of you new teachers (1-5 years of teaching experience) over-plan your lessons? In what classroom situations do they help? Why do you do it? Are there any other tips you can give new teachers?