How to Revive a Failed Lesson in Middle School

There’s nothing worse than spending hours on a lesson plan, only for it to flop. But it happens (and probably more often than we want to admit). Maybe students were disengaged, or the activity you thought they’d be excited about didn’t impress. No matter the circumstance, a failed lesson isn’t something to beat yourself up about. Even if your co-workers aren’t talking about it, we all experience a failed lesson. The important part is what you do when things go south.

What Causes a Failed Lesson

Before you dissect your failed lesson, let’s talk about why lessons sometimes don’t go as planned. The number one reason is likely behavior. You might not have been able to get students engaged and on task. Or maybe you were battling cell phones for 45 minutes straight. Again, we’ve all been there. But as you reflect on your lesson, you’ll want to think of how you can eliminate these challenges in the future.

Another reason your lesson might have gone off the rails is the lesson structure itself. For example, you thought you could teach the material and get students to apply their knowledge within the class period. But the lesson ran behind, and you had to rush through the activity. Or maybe every time you read a class novel together, students become disinterested and act out. If you’re noticing patterns with specific lesson structures, it might be time to try something new. (My done-for-you ELA lesson vault can help with this, too! Check out The Hungry Teacher’s Hub.)

Student buy-in is another potential challenge. Students might not be acting out, but that doesn’t mean they are engaged and actively participating. I talk a lot about building a classroom community because I’ve seen how much it helps student buy-in, but this has a longer lead time. Community doesn’t happen overnight.

Turning Your Lesson Around

I’ll say it again: failed lessons happen to everyone. You’re not a bad teacher because your lesson didn’t go according to plan. Actually, what makes a great teacher is the ability to reflect, recover, and reset after a lesson flops. Let’s talk about how you can recover your lesson, whether for the next time you teach or even mid-lesson.

#1 Reflect

Start with a lesson reflection. Earlier, we talked about a few reasons a lesson might fail. Think about what you witnessed. Are students engaged? Do you see any behavioral challenges? Are there distractions? How did you feel while teaching? Did students seem to follow what you were saying?

When and how you reflect depends on when in the lesson you noticed things were failing. If you realize mid-lesson that students aren’t grasping the material, you might only have time for a quick reflection, which could be as simple as scanning the room and noticing what’s causing issues. If it’s after the lesson that you realize it’s flopped, you have a bit more time for a lesson reflection. I recommend taking notes somewhere in your digital plans, so you know what mistakes to avoid next time you teach.

#2 Recover

Next is the recovery. Again, how you recover is going to depend on the situation, like if you’re making a pivot in the middle of class or planning a lesson redo for later in the week. If you’re halfway through the lesson and attempting the recovery, there are a few things you might try. Maybe students were putting their heads down, so you recover by having the class stand and get in some movement. Or maybe you planned a group activity, but students are way too talkative and unfocused, so you turn it into independent or partner work.

Sometimes, recovery isn’t possible the same day. Instead, you’ll want to recover the lesson later. This can mean repeating the lesson, but taking a different approach. For example, you might try out a lesson from The Hungry Teacher’s Hub instead (a done-for-you lesson hub for middle school ELA teachers). Or you might add in a reteach moment later in the week, like during stations or a warm-up.

#3 Reset

The last step after a failed lesson is the reset. This is when you decide how to move forward. At this point, you’ve already implemented the recovery (or you have a plan to), and you want to prevent those flops from happening again. Of course, no classroom is perfect, so you will have failed lessons in the future, but resets can prevent similar challenges from coming up again and again.

For example, you might have realized in your reflection that cell phones are now a little out of hand. So, you decide to reset your cell phone policy, reestablish expectations, and consistently implement them.

Another possible example is that you realized a certain style of lesson just doesn’t go well. Maybe every time you teach writing, your lesson tends to go south, so you start looking into alternative lesson structures and alternative ways to teach your writing lessons.
Here’s the big takeaway: failed lessons don’t make you a bad teacher. Actually, you’re a pretty awesome teacher for reflecting, recovering, and resetting, so you can see better results next time. If you want help planning your ELA lessons (or you would love to have some tried-and-true lessons on hand), check out The Hungry Teacher’s Hub. It’s packed full of ready-to-do mini lessons, activities, units, and more that have been successfully used in hundreds of classrooms.