Thursday Evening CPD
Some ideas on lesson delivery and pace
By pace I don't mean really fast!
These ideas are more about the structures to keep the lesson ticking over and avoiding dead time.
10 ideas / things to try
- Preparation and organisation ... make sure stuff is out and the pupils can get started straight away with a meaningful task
- Positioning ... standing at the door to welcome the pupils gives you a chance to immediately tell them what they need to be doing
- Clear starter ... NOT BELL WORK! Make sure there is a meaningful starter that the pupils can get on with straight away - something that is high impact in terms of letting you know where the kids are at but that doesn't involve loads of instruction.
- Avoid unnecessary side tracks ... get started before dealing with small issues, don't make the rest of the class wait for one or two individuals
- Discuss objectives ... as the pupils are doing the starter discuss the lesson plan with them so they know what is happening
- Keep instruction clear ... I always ask the kids to repeat it back telling me what they think the tasks are. This avoids kids getting lost because they are unsure what they are doing
- Time keeping ... try to end tasks before any of the pupils are finished this allows you to ask probing questions and then give all pupils a chance to act on feedback.
- Appropriate task selection ... make sure there is some openness / challenge so that all kids have to spend time on their work.
That's only 8 I hear you cry
2 areas that I find really help flow of lessons and pace are, Questioning and Embedded plenaries
Try this technique instead of asking lots of closed qu: What do you think? Can anyone stretch that? Is there an alternative? It makes the kids reveal more than they thought they knew. I would suggest no hands up ... teacher picks the pupil so that questioning can be targeted to ability.
Embedded plenaries ... try to have "check" activities where pupils get a chance to act on feedback / reflect on what they have learned