Write a lesson plan for each lesson

You now need to plan what you will do in each lesson. Whichever way you teach, each lesson needs a clear purpose and ways to meet that purpose. Together, they form a program plan.

Many principles from planning a series of lesson also apply to individual lessons.

For each session, draw up a plan. It must be written down. Here's what to do:

1. Write out clearly the purpose of each lesson as something that students will be able to do. Be brief and to the point.
    
2. Say why it is important. If it isn't important, why should they bother learning it?
    
3. Use forward planners. If you tell people what you're going to do, they can see where it's going and make more sense of it. They learn better because they have a clear framework to hang the details on. This applies to the whole course as well as each lesson. You can use your purpose to keep students on track for each lesson.
    
4. Select your information. You can't pack everything you know into one lesson, or even a series of lessons. The point is to select carefully what it is that students need to learn.
   
   Students will be confused if you spend too much time riding hobbyhorses around or talking about favourite subjects that don't help them achieve the purpose of the lesson. You usually make more progress by giving less information but have students be able to do what is planned, than giving students so much information that they can't achieve the purpose.
    
5. Express each point as a very clear, simple, accurate sentence. Keep it a short as possible so students get the basic message very easily.
   
   Six words is good. If you go over ten words, try again. Make sure your points lead students to achieve the purpose of the lesson. You will find your lessons will go very easily if students get the point the first time you say it. Otherwise, you will waste most of your time clearing up misunderstandings.
    
6. Put your lesson points is an order that will make sense and be useful to your students (not just to you). The sequencing principles are the same as above for planning the series. (More on that later.) For example, group content according to topics and decide on a sequence.
    
7. Choose the delivery methods and learning activities. (More on that later)
    
8. For every lesson point, give an example, illustration or demonstration that clearly matches the point. If it's a practical subject, you demonstrate it to students. If it's information and ideas, an example or illustration is appropriate.
    
9. Constantly give students opportunities to participate. In fact, you should explain requirements for effective participation early in the course. Then ask questions. Get opinions. Request examples. (Of course, you need to avoid embarrassing them.)
1. If it's ideas and information that you're teaching, let them discuss a point or give examples.
2. If it's a practical subject, let students show you whether they can do the each step. Ensure that students get enough practice so they can perform the skill themselves, even if it uses a substantial proportion of your session time.
    
10. Allocate time for each part of the lesson. Planning time usage in lessons is difficult and comes with experience as you learn to anticipate how learners will respond in class.

If you're brand new, you probably just need to ask advice about how long lesson parts will take. Without advice, don't be surprised if your "long" lesson takes no time at all, or you only get halfway through a lesson that didn't appear long. Later on, you'll be able to guess fairly accurately how long your plans will take to teach, and how to deal with digressions.

11. At the end of the lesson, recap the main points or steps to refresh in students' minds what they learnt. They need to be reminded. You can also reinforce previous learning by:
1. Referring to lessons from previous weeks.
2. Answering questions arising from previous weeks.
3. Discussion in preparation for assessment.
4. Incorporating previously learnt ideas or skills into new lessons, so that old skills are kept in practice.
    
12. Also at the end of your lesson, check whether students can do what you wanted them to be able to do. Even if you're not formally assessing them at this stage, you need at least to know whether your lesson achieved its purpose. (That is, it is formative assessment, and feedback of the effectiveness of your teaching.)
     
13. After the lesson, review how it went. What worked? What didn't? Could you use time more efficiently? What would you change?
     

Then go though and add any of the following that is necessary to each part of the program:

• ice breakers
• workplace tasks/applications
• practice opportunities
• assessment points to measure student progress
• duration of each activity or exercise
• references to textbooks or other resources
• location of training
• number of students
• resources (e.g. whiteboard, overhead projector) 
• OHS considerations
• assessment points to measure students' progress
   

If you do all this, you will have a good set of plans. They have to be workable, but they don't have to be perfect.

As you teach, you'll notice what works well and what doesn't, and you'll probably revise your plans every time you teach. And you might adapt them depending on changes in content, different groups, etc. They should never be static documents.

Lesson plan forms

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The introductory session

If your students don't know each other, they can be nervous and need to be eased in. Start with simple introductions and make them feel comfortable with you and with each other.

Your students should know what kind of course they are getting into. This will allay their fears that the course will be boring, too difficult, or too easy.

It could well make them more enthusiastic about what they will learn. When the program is individualized or on-the-job, this stage becomes even more significant for students, because it may affect their schedules and expectations.

The introductory session in any series is important for creating a supportive learning environment. Fortunately, introductory sessions are rather uniform:

1. Welcome people in and check that everybody is there.
    
2. Introduce yourself and get each student to introduce themselves briefly to the group. (Make sure you don't ask students for any information that could be construed to invade their privacy.)
    
3. Brief students on OHS (e.g. location of toilets, evacuation procedure, incident or hazard reporting).
    
4. Discuss and clarify individual and group objectives and expectations. ("What do you want to get out of this course?")
    
5. You are not required to go through the Unit Statement with students, although that is probably the easiest and best way for a group. Give out a written unit description, which should include assessment requirements. Go through the main points and any house rules, then discuss and clarify it. Give students a chance to ask any questions. It is good practice to encourage them to ask outside the class if they want.
    
6. Explain to and discuss with students:
• program goals and what students need to learn
• an overview of the particular unit
• any particular activities (field trips, guest speakers, etc.)
• how the program works, or your reasons for presenting it the way you do.
• any other staff who will play a role (e.g. relating to admin).
   
7. There may be some admin: forms to fill in, fees to pay, etc.
    
8. Answer questions and make them comfortable with the process. Confirm that they understand your explanation.
    
9. You should have time to start on the series. In this first session, you'll probably want to answer the questions: "What is this topic about?" "Why is it important?" "How can it be applied?"

So there's a bonus. It's prepared for you.

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Plan effective use of time

As the teacher, it’s your job to get the best use of your classroom time and move the pace along.

A very good guide to teacher effectiveness is simply the percentage of lesson time that all students are fully engaged in effective learning activities. Admittedly, it's based on process rather than results, but it is fairly easy to observe.You are being effective if:

• nearly all your students spend nearly all lesson time interacting in effective learning activities,
• you limit your "stand and explain" teaching to sessions of no more than ten minutes, and
• you keep your "dead time" to an absolute minimum.

We've seen that good learning tends to be active: students participate or do things that indicate learning. Good learning may be also be passive, especially for some learning styles: Students can be listening, thinking and forming their own understandings (that is, fully engaged) with little outward sign of activity. And usually the best way to know that students are passively learning is to stop fairly often and interact with them. (The trap is to think that telling is teaching.)

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that you must rush through the lesson at top speed. In fact:

• You may need to go slowly through some complex topics so that students actually learn them.
• Students might need extra practice to "overlearn" some things. This especially applies to learnings that must be automatic responses that are quick and efficient, and have little or no room for error. (It often works to make this kind of activity into a competition or race.)

Using this as a criterion, you are not being effective if you have "dead time":

• You are too late starting.
• You take a long time gathering people after a five-minute break.
• Students take extra time moving around the classroom, moving furniture, or organizing equipment.
• Students take extra time making transitions from one learning activity to another.
• Some students aren’t really listening or participating.
• You spend time on administrative details.
• You have to repeat an unclear explanation.
• You lose time on interruptions.
• You spend time on details that are not part of your learning goals.
• You digress to topics that are not part of your learning goals.
• A learning activity or a whole lesson doesn’t work and students either misunderstand it or are confused. You have to un-confuse students, change the approach, and teach the topic again.
• A learning activity has the wrong goals for your course.
• You tie students up in "busywork", that is, an activity that keep students busy without helping them achieve the lesson purpose.
• You waste time handing out notes. (Either give them out at registration, put them out on tables beforehand, or get students to hand them out.)

Some of these result in nearly 100% wasted time for the whole class. Look through the list and identify them. It’s amazing how many teachers survive with less that 30% engagement. That is, their students spend most class time in "dead time."

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Choose learning activities

Students learn more if they actively do something. In a learning activity, students try out a new skill that they are learning or to explore it in some way.

Traps:

• Many teachers simply "stand and tell." There is usually little evidence that students are learning anything. (In fact, the department has a professional development session called "Telling ain't teaching and listening ain't learning"
• Busywork, that is, activities that don't achieve a clear learning purpose

Find what learning activities you can from existing materials and select what you will use if you can. If there is nothing that you can use, you will need to make up your own activities.

Remember:

Example 1

• Skill: Use a particular reference book
• How to teach it: Explain each step of using the reference book and get each student to do the same as you go.
• How to practice it: Practice using the reference book
• How to assess it: Tasks using the reference book

Example 2

• Skill: Ride a bicycle
• How to teach it: Coaching with a bicycle
• How to practice it: Practice with a bicycle
• How to assess it: Watch the student ride a bicycle.

Other than that, it's time to get creative. Generate a range of activities that will work for your students, consider the following variables:

• learning styles
• student characteristics
• delivery modes and activities
• visual aids (pictures, diagrams, objects, etc)
• available resources and materials and
• your ability to produce new materials

Consider these activities:

Tip 1Students will almost teach themselves if you get the activities just right.
For example, a group of hospitality students were assigned to go to the café strip and split up into pairs. Each paid went to a separate café and ordered something different. Then the group met together for a debrief on the characteristics of each café, their menus, and the standard of service. | Tip 2When students need to be learn theory topics, a written assignment is often a better assessment; it gives them a way to process new ideas as they learn. Besides, they might be unable to remember details if assessed in other ways.

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Classroom interaction and managing groups

In a class, most activities will be done in groups so you will need to monitor and manage group dynamics. Your purpose is to:

• make sure that each student can effectively participate and
• maintain good relationships between all class members.

This will be easier if you have done good planning of your use of time, classroom space and discussion questions. Good communication and interpersonal skills are essential.

When you plan your group activities, proactively determine the seating arrangements and how people will participate in groups. Give them clear, realistic instructions of what is expected of them. Make sure that all students can participate and that the groups maintains its cohesion. If somebody is being left out or denied a voice, you will need to intervene. Quiet and shy people also have a right to voice an opinion. Good communication and interpersonal skills are essential.

There are two basic patterns for classroom interaction. We can represent them as the instructor and the students sitting in a circle.

In this one, the teacher does all the talking. If he/she interacts with students, then they only discuss with the teacher. Usually very boring.

In the next one, the teacher starts the discussion but soon the students are interacting with each other. Much more interesting.

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Questioning

Questions are a basic teaching tool as well as an assessment tool, and you can be required to master the techniques. Your goal is to get students doing all the talking with you only keeping the discussion on track.

Write key questions in your lessons plans. Put some thought into them: they should mainly be open-ended discussion starters. Make sure the points of your questions are clear; ten words is a good maximum length.

There are different kinds of questions, and you don't have to use them all. You can write the first four kinds in your lesson planning:

1. Use lead questions to open a new topic of discussion.
2. Closed questions give participants only a limited range of answers to choose from, such as "Yes" or "No." They are usually fairly easy to answer, and are best for getting people to provide an initial response when they are reluctant to speak.
3. Open questions that only ask participants to report information. They are useful because participants often miss information.
4. Open-ended questions that ask participants to think or reflect. There usually isn’t a particular answer that you should look for, and when they give their answer, you need to ask the reasons why and follow through to causes. They cannot answer this kind of question by only repeating information.

If you're not used to teaching, you might want to write some follow-up questions in your preparation. With practice, you'll be able to make them up spontaneously as you go:

1. Clarifying questions are useful when someone has not explained something clearly.
2. Redirecting questions get people back on track when they have skirted past an important issue or are avoiding a sensitive topic.
3. Further exploration questions are useful to explore participant’s answers further. For example:
• "James, that’s a good opinion. Why do you think that?"
• "Thanks, Jess. How would you … ?"
• "Okay. But what would you do if … ?"
4. Balancing questions. Every now and then, dominant group members push a quirky, off-balanced opinion, and the quieter group members seem to want to accept it. It would be a mistake to let the whole group unquestionably accept such an offbeat view, so you need to bring back some balance and responsibility. As discussion leader, you can simply question the extremist view. You can also ask students to respond to a strongly contrasting counterweight view.

Tips

1. Make sure that everyone who wants a say gets a say. Give everybody an opportunity to speak.
2. Control people who talk too much. The best way is to deflect: "The people on that side of the room have been quiet; what do you think?"   Close people down only when you have no choice. "I think we need to give someone else a turn."
3. Pick up on good ideas that come up and explore them. Every now and then in a discussion, you get a golden opportunity to ask a focussed question that will progress student learning very quickly.
4. Draw out students' opinions and fully explore all the most relevant issues:
• Use student's past experiences (e.g. work experience, background in another culture, etc.)
• Play the devil's advocate (graciously, of course). Take the opposite view and get students to defend their ideas. "How would you respond to someone who said …?"
• Identify issues that will make students take different opinions and discuss the matter with each other.
• Explore paradoxes. If people lean too heavily to one side of the paradox, back up the other side.
• Questions can be used in sequences to get students to explore the implications of their views, and to challenge apparent contradictions and logical fallacies.
5. Close down inappropriate lines of discussion immediately, such as destructive gossip, way off track, argumentative, etc.
6. Make sure the points of your questions are clear. Don't play "Guess what's on my mind."
7. Don't push people for more if they've already explained themselves well.
8. Empathy can be used either well or poorly. It can be essential to understanding a viewpoint, but on the other hand, it can be used to justify opinions that are clearly indefensible.

About groups that are reluctant to speak

It can be difficult to start discussions in some groups, especially if they don't know each other. They might be waiting for someone else to break the ice. Some are cautious, bored or disinterested. In these cases, you have several options:

• Ask specific individuals what they think. For example, "What about you, Krissy? What do you think?" then follow it up with: "Mel, what do think?" They may simply be waiting for you to ask.
• Simplify the question (all the way back to a simple yes/no question if need be) until they answer the blatantly obvious, then build back up to the complexity of your original questions.
• Use silence if they are finding speech difficult but need time to come to an answer. It requires skill, but silent periods are not always bad, especially when lots of talk from you would be a hindrance. First, if everybody is thinking about something in particular, a silent period allows people to learn. It also gives people time to think about a particularly poignant question before they answer. You can push them to give answers by staying quiet, but you lose the opportunity if you talk too much. Second, you can give them a reflection time, which is very helpful if the group is accustomed to talking without thinking. You can build on new learning once the silence has finished.

About quiet people

Some people are naturally shy; they just want to be listeners and don’t want to speak. Others are naturally inarticulate and unskilled at expressing their ideas. It’s okay; they might be taking everything in and learning lots. You have several options:

1. They might contribute later when they are more comfortable in the group.
2. When they contribute, make them glad they did.
3. Ask them a quastion. They might be glad of the opportunity.
4. Defend them when more boisterous students criticize their ideas.
5. Quiet students often have good ideas, even though they won't talk about them much. Take the opportunity to explore their ideas.

Ethical alerts!

• It is unethical to exclude some students and give others unfairly large amounts of speaking time; all your students are entitled to your attention.
• Give students the right to their own opinions. Don’t try to force them to agree with you. In many matters of opinion, students should generally be able to arrive at their own conclusions, and you should not try to indoctrinate or manipulate students into accepting your personal view. This is easy to do, but it it is unfair to create an extremist stereotype of a view that you dislike, and then present your own view as the only balanced view. As a general guideline, you should intervene if the student pushes an opinion that will risk his/her ability to pass the unit or that contravenes other ethical guidelines (e.g. offensive or discriminatory).

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived about 2,500 years ago, and is probably still the most important person in the use of questions in teaching. From his time, questions have been most helpful in teaching:

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Plan how you will use your classroom space

As the teacher, it’s your job to get the best use of your classroom space.

First, check that the room is reserved on the admin schedule. If possible, allow enough time before the session to set up, and afterwards to talk to students and pack anything back in place.

Second, set the room up to be suitable for any interactions you have planned:

1. All students should easily be able to see you and all your visual aids
2. You should be able to see and hear everyone else. This usually means that they need to sit close enough together
3. Everyone needs to be in the right places for any activity you have planned; this will prevent any unnecessary moving around during class.
4. Nobody is left out.
5. Minimize distractions.
1. For teaching adults, arrange the room so that the doorway is at the back of the room so people can come and go if they need to.
2. Eliminate any background noise (e.g. traffic), usually by closing some windows.*
3. For teaching computing, make sure that students can see you without being distracted by what’s on their computer screens.

If it’s a big space, some people might take a amount of space a long way from the teacher so that they are not near anybody else. This tends to make them less willing to interact and participate, and makes the class harder for you to teach. (Remember, learning is partly a communal exercise.)

The simplest way to minimize the problem is for you to set up the furniture beforehand so that you control the classroom environment. This may be:

• Small groups around tables: best for small group activities that require writing
• Small groups without tables: best for small group activities that require little or no writing
• One large circle
• Half-circle
• Concentric half-circles
• Desks in rows

Give clear instructions if you want people to move around. In a few cases, you won’t be able to set the room up beforehand for everything you want to do. For example, you might want to start by speaking to a large group together, then split into small groups for an activity, and then come back together.

The main thing that can go wrong

The main thing that can go wrong is a kind of chaos that wastes time and delays you from starting the next activity. You should be able to anticipate when this would happen and prevent it.

How to resolve it:

• Plan exactly what they must do beforehand.
• Take control—adults will appreciate the leadership. Give students clear, simple instructions at the time. Explain yourself, but don’t talk so much that students become confused.
• Take initiative to start the next activity as soon as possible. As the teacher, the pace of the lesson is your responsibility.

If you divide students into groups …

Have a simple system of dividing people into groups. Adults won’t normally waste much time, but you can speed the process along:

• Provide seating in groups.
• Have a predetermined way of putting people in groups (e.g. category on name-card).
• Appoint leaders.
• Appointing group scribes if they need to make notes.
• If teaching at a large location (as in a conference) you may designate on other rooms around the facility.

Free-form activities

You can allow students do drift from group to group according to what interests them, but this only works well for some kinds of creative activities when people need to explore their own interests. You will find a few people will want to go around and watch, but are reluctant to try anything. A few will tend to socialize more than learn.

___________

*In a large lecture you might need a sound system, and students won’t be able to hear each other, or perhaps even need to.

Ensure that any student questions are conveyed to the whole group through the sound system. You can do this by having microphones available to students or by relaying their questions through your rostrum microphone.

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The Law of Unintended Outcomes

Anything you do can have a result that you didn't expect. In fact, you will probably always have results that you don't expect. You won't know everything about how students will react, whether negative or positive.

If it's because you didn't plan your lessons well, there could be more negative unintended outcomes than you hoped.

There's a positive side to this too.

• Discussions can bring up excellent insights that you hadn't foreseen.
• Students might apply what they learn in very different contexts.
• Your students might pick up on other kinds of skills that they need to learn as part of a task.
• Students are sometimes inspired by a casual remark, then spend a lot of time reading and thinking about it. So lots of the learning might be excellent, but not what you intended.
• You might find out that your intended outcomes are not the best ones, so make in-course adjustments.

Even though you should plan well and foresee what will happen, you should expect that you won't always have the exact results you intended.

Luke, Amanda, Simon and Kate

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