I’ve spent most of my adult life either convincing people to learn how to teach or helping them become better teachers and I find myself at the stage where I often just spout random bits of wisdom.
I was inspired by this blog post from the Innovative Educator and thought I would share some of my ideas with you. Here are the first five:
Teach to the students in front of you, not to the platonic ideal or the student you once were. You must start by determining what the students already know and build your lesson from there. This may sound daunting but I promise once you learn a few simple techniques, accessing prior knowledge is a simple and easy way to start off lessons on new material.
1) Have the individually brainstorm everything they know about a topic. Give them time to share out with a partner and then give them time to share with their table or a small group. Walk around the room and identify what most kids know, what most kids don’t know, and who are you few experts in the room.
2) Another way to do this that is slightly more active is to write a set of probing questions (5 or 6 usually works) on big paper and have small groups of kids brainstorm the answers. Give the first group 5 minutes and then rotate the groups around with kids putting check marks on the answers that they already knew. Have the last group at each paper report out what they found out about from the brainstorm. Here are some more detailed instructions.
3) If you don’t have a lot of time, survey the class. Think about a set of “yes” or “no” questions and have the students raise their hand if response to the question. Start with the most basic question – “Who has heard of DNA?” and move to the more specific “Who thinks this apple/rock/desk has DNA in it?” and lead on to your lesson plan “Who wants to try and extract DNA from the apple/rock/desk?”.
4) Have a set of activities that will perk the kids up or calm them down. If the kids just came from lunch and are bouncing off the walls, have a low key activity like a word or math puzzle on the board for them to solve. Need them to perk up, do something physical like stretching or jumping jacks.
Here’s one I find myself saying a lot:
5) Don’t teach to the kid who always raises her hand and answers the question correctly each time. That student is a very unrepresentative sample of the knowledge of the class so mix it up, call on a lot of different kids, and don’t teach to the kid who you perceive to be the smartest in the class.
My next set will be about classroom management, stay tuned!
