Before delivering my first lesson, I sat together with my supervising teacher in order to ask her for some advice on lesson planning. The first tip my teacher gave me was to be very clear about the outcomes and indicators before beginning with the actual planning process. “Cognitive clarity” of the teacher is in fact a fundamental to successful teaching and learning, as has been corroborated by research (Killen, 2007). Not only the outcomes, but also and very importantly, the individual lesson steps always need to be mentally present to the teacher in order to convey them in a structured way and with “verbal clarity” and help students achieve in the best possible way (Killen, 2007).
Another aspect I was asked to take into account and which might seem unimportant at the first glance was the time of the day when the lesson was supposed to be delivered. For example, I was advised against introducing a new topic in the 5th or 6th period due to the poor concentration of students. The gender-specific nature of learning styles was the next point raised by my teacher, a very interesting aspect I have not thought about before since I have only taught at co-educational schools so far. I was told that male students generally prefer to do things rather than talking about it. Unfortunately enough there is only brief mention made of this in the guides I found on lesson differentiation. My practicum teacher advised me to take this into account when engaging my students in brainstorming. Rather than asking them to “just” think about ideas they associated with the lesson’s topic she recommended me to make them jot down their ideas into their workbooks. This again brought to mind the crucial importance of knowing your students well in order to differentiate the curriculum in the best possible way and adequately cater for them. Hence, part of my “homework” before starting my four weeks block is to do some research and reading on gender differences in learning styles.
References:
Killen, R. (2007) Using Direct Instruction as a Teaching Strategy. In Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from Research and Practice, (4th ed.), (pp 101-124). Thomson Science Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment