Plan your series of lessons

Now that you know what it is that students must learn, you need to make an outline of your sessions.

At this stage, you are looking at the series of sessions as a whole and sorting it into a progression of lessons.

Find out more about your subject

You will need to develop it and make written notes. You might be very confident that you have mastered it, but you will still need notes and materials. In fact, your RTO may have particular design rules on notes e.g. layout templates, page or budget limits, etc.

If you haven't done so yet, develop any new learning activities. They should be relevant and engaging, and should work for adult students.

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Group content according to topics

Group skills or knowledge together according to topics. That is, break the content into manageable chunks.

This will also mean that you'll only have to teach everything once.

Sounds easy, but getting a clear idea of exactly what you want to teach will simplify your teaching life.

You might want to simply have a lesson on each element, but this is not always a good idea. You might need to:

add other skills to help students achieve those outcomes
add lessons for teaching relevant knowledge
combine elements together to make one lesson from multiple elements.

Tip 1When planning to teach a series of units with large overlapping content, try to arrange a simple set of topics that covers the essentials of all the units. | Tip 2 The units only specify the outcomes. They are not a curriculum of what you should teach. You might have to add material to get students from where they are now to achieving outcomes.

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Integrate assessment into classroom schedules

Classroom schedules normally give you limited time to get students to the outcome.

Look at all the advantages of integrating assessment into lessons:

You can normally get everything done within your time limits.
Assessment is easier to manage if you can use the same activity for practice, formative assessment and final assessment.
If you let each stage of a lesson flow naturally into the next, practice progresses easily into the final assessment. Students are better prepared for assessment and less nervous.
It is very unlikely that students will be assessed as not yet competent because you have observed their practice and given formative assessments.
Besides, students have a better chance of being ready for final assessment on time if you notice soon enough what they still need help or extra practice with.

Here�s how a training session can follow these stages:

Introduction:	You let people know the purpose and why this is important
Demonstration:	You show students what to do and tell them how to do it
Guided practice:	The students try it and you provide guidance
Independent practice:	They try it with less guidance from you.
Formative assessment:	You monitor how they are going and informally do a formative assessment while they are practicing. You might also ask students to assess themselves or assess each other.
Summative assessment:	When students are ready, you do the final assessment by walking around the class with an assessment form.

You can also use the same progression over several lessons or over a whole unit. It is normally a mistake to do a summative assessment in each lesson, and you would have summative assessment towards the end of the unit.

A danger to avoid. If you hold many small assessments over a longer period, you might not put all the bits together. Make sure that it really is summative assessment and that you put all the bits together.

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Decide on a sequence

A sequence is the order in which you you will progress through the material. You need to sequence it in a way that students will see a simple, natural progression in the lessons. All sequences:

start where students are and with what they already know,

give clear markers as to where you're going and what purpose you wish to achieve, and

give them something that they can do one step at a time.

It is important at two levels: the whole course and each lesson.

It's easy to teach people something they already know. The challenge is to teach them something that they don't know yet. If students think "That seems easy" and "That makes sense" or "I can do it now" then the sequence is probably working.

Kinds of sequences

Progress chronologically (recommended)

Use steps or stages as if you were telling a story (like these materials). Easy to use for lots of things.

Make the basic principles clear very early, and then build on them.

Good for working with concepts, and appeals to conceptual learners. You can add sophistication or detail afterwards. You can explore different case studies to see how the principles work in practice.

Simple to complex skills 1

Introduce the topic of study, provide basic skills and practice in each lesson, then put skills together in a more complex project.

Simple to complex skills 2

Start with orientation, then monitor adjustment, then provide basic skills and practice in each lesson, and then provide more sophisticated skills.

Quest

Go on a quest to find answers. Start with giving some information, then give a question or task, then let students explore and reflect.

This sequence is quite difficult to use because you need some idea where your students might end up. But you can't predetermine their answers.

Concrete to abstract

This learning cycle can be used for individual units, for clusters of units, or for whole courses. It can even be used as a weekly or monthly cycle for supervising practicum.

At higher qualification levels, where conceptual skills are more prominent, the reflection and concept formation stages are essential and need time to do well.

The cycle comprises four stages:

Concrete experience. Students need to do the job with real people in real situations learning real skills. On-job learning is by nature holistic, not artificially divided into many separate units. By being workplace-driven, students' learning experience can be highly efficient and very practical.
If you are leading a group through this stage you might be most interested in asking questions like: "What did you do?" "What happened?" You might also want to get your students to explain their experiences as a story.

Observation and reflection. Students need time to reflect on what they do, ask the bigger "why?" questions figure out the "big picture" of what they are trying to achieve. Sometimes the challenge is to find the best questions, not just the best answers.
It is best if students can meet with peers who are going through similar experiences, and get input that is not available at the workplace. It may be in a classroom situation, or it may be at a much wider gathering.

Concept formation. At this, stage, students need to start developing their own idea of what is going on or understanding how to achieve a particular purpose. At this stage they are still working with hypotheses, things that they have not fully tested for themselves. Some students will be very creative and others might simply be "internalizing" an already existent body of skills and knowledge.
If you're working at a higher academic level, you'll probably find that information (e.g. textbooks, library, Internet) might be very helpful at his stage. But don't let your students just believe whatever authors say; they need to formulate their own ideas through evaluating written materials.

Testing new learning. At this stage, students put their new knowledge into practice to see how it works. This will give them new experiences from which to learn and start the cycle again.

The classic outline

The classic outline was was developed by the ancient Greeks. It is excellent if you have a point that you need to make and prove. It can work best in some kinds of lecture situations, especially if you are dealing with ideas. It depends on your ability to be very fair with evidence and not over-opinionated.

Introduction: Define the importance of your topic, and express your point (the thesis) as a declarative statement.

Defense: Describe honestly each argument against your point, starting with the strongest argument. Give a response to each one, either by defending your thesis or by qualifying it.

Give arguments for: Give each argument in support of your thesis, starting form the weakest argument and going through to the strongest. Give evidence for each argument. Give more space or time to the stronger arguments.

Conclusion: Restate your thesis, recap the arguments, and close with a general application that doesn't bring up any new points.

Arrangements of stages

Many sequences talk about going through several stages in a particular order:

Sequence 1

Identify the purpose and why it is important

Look at what it is that students need to know (the content)

Identify the implications of putting it into practice

Make the decision to implement it

Attempt implementation

Sequence 2

Identify the purpose and why it's important

Research a procedure

Formulate an approach

Implement the approach

Evaluate.

Sequence 3

Introduce the topic of study

Provide basic skills and practice in each lesson

Put skills together in a more complex project for assessment.

Sequence 4

Give orientation

Monitor adjustment

Provide basic skills and practice

Provide more sophisticated skills.

Sequence 5

I do, you watch

I do, you help

You do, I help

You do, I watch

Sequence 6

Give students an idea with a short explanation that they can easily understand.

Get them to make a simple response to it. (The purpose at this stage is to engage students rather than explore the idea.)

Do a learning activity that helps them understand it. You will need to give students considerable guidance at this stage, because the idea is still quite new to them.

Students do more learning activities with decreasing amounts of teacher help. This is called the "fade" because the role of the teacher fades out. It correlates to practice and formative assessment.)

Students do it on their own without help. This is called the "release" because the student is released to do the task by him/herself. It is also the summative assessment phase.

Sequence 7

In your preparation, break the skill into simple steps. This will make it easy to understand and communicate.

Start by telling students the purpose or goal of the skill.

Show the students how to do each step.

Let students do each step with help and supervision. (They start performing the skill themselves.)

Let them practice repeatedly with little or no help and supervision. (They become proficient)

Assess whether they can do it. (Now you know that they have the skill.)

You can add any difficult cases after students have the basic skill. There might be variations of the basic skill, complications, or exceptions.

Teaching ideas and methods: Bloom�s taxonomy

This particular sequence is good for teaching ideas, theories, approaches, or methodologies. It�s based on what is known in education as "Bloom�s taxonomy". It takes a bit of practice to get right, but it�s brilliant when you do.

The basic sequence for teaching one rather complex idea or way of doing something, given below, is divided into two levels:

The lower level

Start by getting students to answer the basic "What?" questions, without interpreting or jumping to conclusions. What are the facts or basic items of information?

Understanding

Translate the basic information into a different form. This is a very useful way to teach for understanding. For example, get students to:

"express in your own words"

tell as a story

draw as a picture or diagram

make up a role-play

create an example or a case study.

Explain the relationship between different elements. (This is usually fairly difficult, because you have to pick out elements that don�t have self-explanatory interrelationships.)

Explore implications and/or consequences. This is also very useful, although you might need to give clear examples for students to explore. Ask questions like

"What would happen if . . . ?"

"What else could happen?"

"What kind of results would you expect?"

"Who else would be affected by � ?"

"What kind of responses might you get?"

Application: how to put it into practice

The higher level

If you teach higher level thinking skills (often necessary in higher qualifications), you can add a whole new level of sophistication.

To implement it, you will need to teach two (or more) approaches.

First, teach students one approach using the "lower level" sequence above from Bloom's taxonomy.

Second, teach the other approach (or approaches) using the same sequence.

You are then ready to compare the different approaches and answer some higher-level, more theoretical questions:

Analysis: Comparing the various methods, what are the fundamental elements of the task?

Synthesis: Could we re-arrange these fundamental elements in a new way and create a new method or theory?

Evaluation: Draw informed conclusions on the strengths, weaknesses, limitations and validity of individual approaches and of the combined whole.

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Write an outline

Put the chunks in sequence and allocate time for each stage and for giving assessments. Don't lump too much into some lessons and leave others thin.

It might look like this:

Session 1: Introduction: What is Occupational Health and Safety?

Session 2: Basic rules and principles

Session 3: Conducting a basic workplace safety check

Session 4: Industry-specific requirements

Session 5: Conducting an industry-specific safety check

Session 6: Remediation strategies

Session 7: Investigation protocols

Session 8: Assessment

Check. Will it will meet the need?

Check the outline against what students need to learn and what they already know. Will it get students from where they are to where they need to get to?

The assessment methods and tools also need to be worked out at this stage, but it is such a major task that it is covered separately.

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Prepare a Unit Description

At about this stage, you really need to prepare a Unit Description to give to students at the first session. The point is to give students all necessary information in one document, including telling them how they will be assessed. It must be written down and your supervisor would normally approve it and file a copy in the RTO�s records.

There are at least two parts to any unit description:

A training plan, which explains to students everything they need to know about how the unit (or cluster of units) will be taught.

An assessment plan, which explains to students everything they need to know about how the unit (or cluster of units) will be assessed.

If you are teaching and assessing, you normally join them together into one document and save yourself some paperwork.

Students don't always read unit descriptions carefully and sometimes lose them, so be prepared to remind students of its contents from time to time. You can also put a copy on a notice board or on the website.

A Unit Description should at least include:

The name and code of the unit

The name of your RTO

The date

The instructor�s name

The purpose of the unit

A schedule of sessions, preferably giving a topic for each session

Any special requirements (such as workplace experience)

What students have to do for the assessment. (See the section on Planning Assessment.)

You might also need to explain:

the rationale behind your approach

textbooks and reading assignments

rules or guidelines for specific resources

specific OHS procedures

It is strongly recommended that you disclose a statement of outcomes and assessment criteria expressed in plain workplace English, contextualized for their assessment situation.

Your RTO is obliged to provide other information. It is usually given in the general information in the student website or handbook. You might need to direct students to it in your unit description, even though students should have had it before they enroll. This kind of information includes:

support services (including language, literacy and numeracy, study skills)

access and equity matters

appropriate behaviour

attendance rules

appeals and grievance processes

RPL

pre-requisites and co-requisites

flexible learning and assessment options

equivalent units for credit transfer

extra OHS requirements.

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Review your preparation so far

Review the program draft with key stakeholders. You can use written quality criteria and evaluation tools if you have them. Important things are

clear sequence of information

summarizing key points

prepared aids

scheduling

opportunities for practice and questions

If your find that you need to fix a mistake, now is the time to fix it. This is also the stage to get final approval from your supervisor.

It sounds a lot, but unit statements are not that difficult to write, especially if your organization has a good template. They are a public document, need version numbers, and must be lodged with your administrator. If your RTO has a website with a student area, the unit statement may be posted.

Keep all your documentation somewhere accessible in a useful form. A separate folder for each unit works for most people. After you've used the unit statement each time, you can use the feedback from students and others to update it.

TipFlip the class-room. If you give lectures, put them on YouTube and assign them for homework. Then spend the whole class time for activities.

Luke, Amanda, Simon and Kate

Home

Progress chronologically (recommended)	Use steps or stages as if you were telling a story (like these materials). Easy to use for lots of things.
Make the basic principles clear very early, and then build on them.	Good for working with concepts, and appeals to conceptual learners. You can add sophistication or detail afterwards. You can explore different case studies to see how the principles work in practice.
Simple to complex skills 1	Introduce the topic of study, provide basic skills and practice in each lesson, then put skills together in a more complex project.
Simple to complex skills 2	Start with orientation, then monitor adjustment, then provide basic skills and practice in each lesson, and then provide more sophisticated skills.
Quest	Go on a quest to find answers. Start with giving some information, then give a question or task, then let students explore and reflect. This sequence is quite difficult to use because you need some idea where your students might end up. But you can't predetermine their answers.
Concrete to abstract	This learning cycle can be used for individual units, for clusters of units, or for whole courses. It can even be used as a weekly or monthly cycle for supervising practicum. At higher qualification levels, where conceptual skills are more prominent, the reflection and concept formation stages are essential and need time to do well. The cycle comprises four stages: Concrete experience. Students need to do the job with real people in real situations learning real skills. On-job learning is by nature holistic, not artificially divided into many separate units. By being workplace-driven, students' learning experience can be highly efficient and very practical. If you are leading a group through this stage you might be most interested in asking questions like: "What did you do?" "What happened?" You might also want to get your students to explain their experiences as a story. Observation and reflection. Students need time to reflect on what they do, ask the bigger "why?" questions figure out the "big picture" of what they are trying to achieve. Sometimes the challenge is to find the best questions, not just the best answers. It is best if students can meet with peers who are going through similar experiences, and get input that is not available at the workplace. It may be in a classroom situation, or it may be at a much wider gathering. Concept formation. At this, stage, students need to start developing their own idea of what is going on or understanding how to achieve a particular purpose. At this stage they are still working with hypotheses, things that they have not fully tested for themselves. Some students will be very creative and others might simply be "internalizing" an already existent body of skills and knowledge. If you're working at a higher academic level, you'll probably find that information (e.g. textbooks, library, Internet) might be very helpful at his stage. But don't let your students just believe whatever authors say; they need to formulate their own ideas through evaluating written materials. Testing new learning. At this stage, students put their new knowledge into practice to see how it works. This will give them new experiences from which to learn and start the cycle again.
The classic outline	The classic outline was was developed by the ancient Greeks. It is excellent if you have a point that you need to make and prove. It can work best in some kinds of lecture situations, especially if you are dealing with ideas. It depends on your ability to be very fair with evidence and not over-opinionated. Introduction: Define the importance of your topic, and express your point (the thesis) as a declarative statement. Defense: Describe honestly each argument against your point, starting with the strongest argument. Give a response to each one, either by defending your thesis or by qualifying it. Give arguments for: Give each argument in support of your thesis, starting form the weakest argument and going through to the strongest. Give evidence for each argument. Give more space or time to the stronger arguments. Conclusion: Restate your thesis, recap the arguments, and close with a general application that doesn't bring up any new points.

Sequence 1	Identify the purpose and why it is important Look at what it is that students need to know (the content) Identify the implications of putting it into practice Make the decision to implement it Attempt implementation
Sequence 2	Identify the purpose and why it's important Research a procedure Formulate an approach Implement the approach Evaluate.
Sequence 3	Introduce the topic of study Provide basic skills and practice in each lesson Put skills together in a more complex project for assessment.
Sequence 4	Give orientation Monitor adjustment Provide basic skills and practice Provide more sophisticated skills.
Sequence 5	I do, you watch I do, you help You do, I help You do, I watch
Sequence 6	Give students an idea with a short explanation that they can easily understand. Get them to make a simple response to it. (The purpose at this stage is to engage students rather than explore the idea.) Do a learning activity that helps them understand it. You will need to give students considerable guidance at this stage, because the idea is still quite new to them. Students do more learning activities with decreasing amounts of teacher help. This is called the "fade" because the role of the teacher fades out. It correlates to practice and formative assessment.) Students do it on their own without help. This is called the "release" because the student is released to do the task by him/herself. It is also the summative assessment phase.
Sequence 7	In your preparation, break the skill into simple steps. This will make it easy to understand and communicate. Start by telling students the purpose or goal of the skill. Show the students how to do each step. Let students do each step with help and supervision. (They start performing the skill themselves.) Let them practice repeatedly with little or no help and supervision. (They become proficient) Assess whether they can do it. (Now you know that they have the skill.) You can add any difficult cases after students have the basic skill. There might be variations of the basic skill, complications, or exceptions.