The lesson that runs out of clock at minute 30
TP 4 of 6, a 45-minute lesson, six adult learners (A2), your trainer and one peer observing. Main aim: by the end, learners will be able to ask for and give simple directions. Your plan: 8-min lead-in, 12-min presentation of nine phrases, 10-min coursebook gap-fill, 10-min information-gap map task, 5-min feedback. At minute 30 you are still in the presentation: four phrases covered, and the group is muddling 'go past' and 'go along'. Two learners are checking phones; one keeps asking you to translate. Fifteen minutes remain, the map task has not been touched, and the trainer is writing steadily.
1. Minute 30 to 45: what exactly do you do, and what principle drives the choice?
Read the worked answer
Go to the productive task at minute 32, not minute 40. Reasoning:
- The main aim is a speaking outcome. The presentation is a means. A lesson that ends mid-presentation leaves you with no evidence of the aim at all, and the aim is what you are assessed on.
- Fifteen minutes cannot hold the plan, so something must go. Cut the thing furthest from the aim: the gap-fill (10 min) tests recognition and gives you far less information than the map task about whether they can actually do it. It is the cheapest cut.
- Reduce rather than rewrite. Keep the four phrases they half-know, drop the other five. Four usable phrases plus a real task beats nine phrases and no practice.
- Model one exchange yourself (30 seconds), then pair them and monitor, so the task begins in two minutes, not six.
- Put feedback inside the last five minutes and make it about an error you actually heard while monitoring, not about the worksheet.
Write on your plan: 'aim unchanged; procedure cut at minute 30; evidence = map task performance.' You have not abandoned the lesson; you have protected the aim.
2. In your self-evaluation, due the same evening, how do you account for the change without either over-apologising or pretending nothing happened?
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Neither the apologetic version nor the 'it went well' version earns credit. Use five moves:
- What happened, with numbers. 'At minute 30, four of nine phrases had been covered and no learner had used any of them in a task.'
- Why. Nine items is over-ambitious for A2; I presented without a checkpoint, so I had no signal that the class was not ready to move on; the presentation had no time ceiling.
- What I did. Cut to the map task at minute 32 and dropped the gap-fill.
- What learners still got, with evidence. Four phrases, used in a two-way task; three pairs completed the map without asking me for help.
- What changes next time. Maximum five items in a presentation stage; one checkpoint question before leaving it; timings written as clock times rather than durations.
Then name one thing to carry forward and one thing to watch. The criterion being assessed is reflection, not contrition: a trainer wants to see that you would act on this without being told twice.
3. What would you do differently at the planning stage to make this collapse less likely?
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Plan backwards from the production, not forwards from the coursebook.
- Write the final task first, then list what learners must be able to say to do it. That gives four phrases, not nine, and it tells you what to leave out.
- Give the presentation a hard ceiling (8 minutes) and put a checkpoint inside it: cover the board and ask 'how do I get from the bank to the station?' Overrun then becomes visible while you can still act on it.
- Write clock times, not durations. '10:14, 10:22' is harder to silently extend than '8 minutes'.
- Rehearse the board work. A table drawn live at minute 3 can eat four minutes of a 45-minute lesson.
- Mark one stage as sacrificial (usually the gap-fill) so a collapse has a planned release valve rather than an improvisation.
All five are planning habits, not teaching talent - which is why the trainer will look for them in the next plan.