So many teachers might feel insulted or demoralized if you told them that they needed advice on how to conduct a class and make the lesson fruitful for students. However, this is the case, lots of times – because some teachers enter the classroom without a lesson plan, leading to problems like;
- Missing out on some of the planned topics
- Students fail to grasp what you’re teaching
- You don’t know how much your students know or don’t know
- Mismanagement of your classroom time
By following the lesson plan below, you’ll later find your own way to conduct lessons step by step, further making your lessons more effective.
1. Greeting and roll calling the students
Greeting is almost obvious, and most teachers do it, but roll calling is skipped by majority of the teachers. Below are the purposes of roll calling students;
- Helps you understand the number of students in attendance
- Enables you to identify the students that missed your lesson, and possibly why
- Gives you the basis to assess your students, your teaching techniques and their efficiency, and the solutions to possible errors
- Prevents some students from missing classes
Roll calling is one of the best and most effective ways to start a lesson, and it’s number one on this list for that matter.
2. Reviewing the previous lesson
Before you start to embark on the fresh lesson and give out fresh information, it is appropriate for you to review the previous lesson, in which you get the students to remember the nuggets from what you last taught them. The benefits of this include;
- Getting the learners’ attention ahead of the new lesson
- Motivating the learners to learn new stuff
- Providing a basis to which they can just add the information they’re taking in during the current lesson
Of course, not every teacher starts with this step; and this is why you find an imbalance in the number of students that grasp what they teach.
3. Delivering the content to the learners
Now that you have warmed your students up for the big lesson, it’s high time you started delivering the content you planned to deliver.
If you didn’t skip the first preparatory steps, you’ll be amazed by the attitude of your students in terms of;
- Participation
- Enthusiasm
- Learning and grasping
- Attention retention
However, the way you deliver your content has to be systematic. This means you have to start with the simple stuff, all the way to the complex stuff.
4. Calling for questions from the learners
As you’ve probably noticed in your lessons before, there are so many questions that students want to ask you, but are limited due to fear, shyness and personal issues. Below are the advantages of calling for questions;
- Helps you recover the topics you covered probably fast and didn’t explain in-depth
- Some students ask challenging questions, which helps you develop different ways that you can explain the concepts you know
- Gives the students a positive attitude towards you and before you know it, you might never have to force them to attend your classes
It’s also important to note that your attitude to the questioned they ask, contributes a great deal to whether they’ll be able to ask questions ever again. This is because students hate to feel stupid, and laughing or making fun will stop them from ever asking a question in your class.
5. Giving exercises
Not all students will be able to ask questions during your classes. This is why you have to test your students, because you’ll find out who grasped and who didn’t, and how to help them.
Exercises should ideally involve a little bit of reminding them of what they previously learnt in other lessons, just to make sure everything sits deep in their memory.
6. Marking the exercise
Hard and tiresome as this will sound, marking your students the most effective way that you can find out how to help them. Here are the key things to observe;
- Their knowledge
- Question approach
- Ability to analyze questions
- Their handwriting and neatness
Talk about marking and everyone visualizes a pile of books in front of an upset teacher. However, that’s the lazy way to see things, because marking can be insightful and fun.
7. Harmonizing learners findings
This is where you get to explain to your learners about their findings, what’s right and what’s wrong, and what they have to do in order to always get it right.
By harmonizing their findings, you help your learners to straighten their perception and know what’s right and how to always get it right.
Conclusion;
No matter how perfect or imperfect this plan might sound, there are some very important steps that you wouldn’t want to miss, lest you render your lesson fruitless. Therefore, approach your lesson systematically and things will go rather smoothly.