The key tasks involved in classroom teaching can usefully be grouped under three main headings: ‘planning’, ‘presentation and monitoring’, and ‘refl ection and evaluation’.
These three groupings form a continuous cycle underlying the teacher’s decision-making. Planning involves the teacher’s decisions about the aims of a lesson, its con-text, and the learning activities that will effectively achieve its aims. Presentation and monitoring involve decisions the teacher makes about the progress of a lesson while it is taking place. Refl ection and evaluation involve decisions made after a lesson has fi nished, which feed into future planning activities. These three main groupings of key classroom teaching tasks are refl ected in many of the discussions of effective teaching in terms of practical craft knowledge and will be considered here in some detail.
Planning
Good planning is a crucial aspect of effective teaching. Many experienced teachers have a store of wisdom concerning the ingredients of a successful lesson, which enables them to spend much less time in planning than is the case for most younger teachers.
However, all teachers need to have clear ideas about the lesson they wish to set up and have carried out the necessary preparation if it is to be successful.
Three main elements are involved in planning a lesson (Butt, 2008; Skowron, 2006).
First is the need to consider the general aims and specifi c educational outcomes the lesson is intended to achieve. The second element, having taken account of the context (e.g. the type of pupils, the school’s resources) and desired learning outcomes, is to consider what will be the most effective learning environment, activities and sequenc-ing of these? Third, is the need to monitor and evaluate pupils’ educational progress, so that the teacher can assess whether the lesson has been successful. Planning is essen-tial for the success of all lessons. It is also particularly crucial in taking account of important differences between pupils, such as learning diffi culties indicative of special educational needs, and in the use of teaching and learning activities designed to combat any problems that may be linked to ability (both high and low), motivation, social class, gender and race. The main questions involved in planning are detailed in Table 6.1.
The most important aspect of planning is to ensure that the learning experience fulfi ls the three psychological conditions necessary for pupil learning to occur:
Attentiveness:
Ɂ the learning experience must elicit and sustain pupils’ attention.
Receptiveness:
Ɂ the learning experience must elicit and sustain pupils’ motivation and mental effort.
Appropriateness:
Ɂ the learning experience must be appropriate for the educational outcomes desired.
1 What level and range of ability is there in the class?
What level and type of motivation can I expect?
What is the composition of the class in terms of ethnic minority pupils, social class and sex?
Do any of the pupils have special educational needs?
What do the pupils already know and feel about the subject/topic?
How have the pupils behaved in previous lessons?
KEYCLASSROOMTEACHINGQUALITIESANDTASKS 87 2 What do I want the pupils to learn in this lesson:
• cognitively (e.g. knowledge, understanding, intellectual skills)?
• affectively (e.g. interest, attitudes, self-confi dence)?
How does this relate to their present knowledge, feelings and needs?
How does this relate to the course as a whole (both past and future)?
3 What constraints need to be accommodated:
• time available for lesson, preparation time available?
• number of pupils in class, layout of classroom?
• teacher’s knowledge and skills?
• acceptability of lesson to signifi cant others (colleagues, parents)?
4 Are there any other considerations of note:
• Has this lesson been successful with a similar class?
• What time of day, week, term, etc. is it?
5 What teaching method (type of learning tasks, activities and experience) will best foster the cognitive and affective outcomes desired, given the context and the constraints which need to be accommodated (as outlined above):
• discovery methods, exposition plus practice, individualised learning, work sheets, small group work?
6 Once a particular method and general academic topic for the lesson have been chosen, what sequencing of the tasks/activities/experience, level of diffi culty and structuring of the topic, and pace of lessons will be best for the lesson to be successful in maintaining the pupils’ attention, interest, understanding and motivation, and achieving the desired cognitive and affective outcomes?
7 What level of pupil performance will be expected, and how will the degree of success of the learning taking place be determined (e.g. questioning of pupils, written work, follow-up tests)?
8 What preparation is necessary before the lesson:
• Are there suffi cient textbooks available, is the equipment in working order, which questions and/or exercises will be set and what are the answers to these?
9 What teacher behaviour is required during the lesson to ensure its success:
• quality, style and tone of presentation and monitoring?
• use of questions, reinforcement and feedback?
• monitoring of general progress and the management of discipline?
• adjustment to the lesson (e.g. pace, content) as appropriate?
• helping individual pupils?
10 How will the lesson be perceived and experienced by the pupils:
• of interest/relevance/importance/diffi culty?
• their comprehension of instructions and task requirements?
11 What problems might arise?
Table 6.1 Planning a lesson
Indeed, consideration of these three psychological conditions must underpin all discus-sion of the key classroom teaching tasks if effective teaching is to take place.
Considering the general aims and specifi c educational outcomes the lesson is intended to achieve, involves a complex web of concerns. These include tensions between short-term and long-short-term outcomes, between cognitive and affective outcomes and the fact that different outcomes may be directed at particular pupils within the class. The most important question for a teacher to ask is ‘What should pupils have learnt from the lesson?’, whether it be in terms of knowledge, understanding, skills or attitudes.
It may be thought that teachers planning for each lesson will follow a three-step logical sequence of: specifying objectives selecting learning activities specifying the evalu-ation procedures to be used during the lesson to monitor pupils’ progress and learning outcomes. In general, this is indeed the way student teachers go about planning lessons (particularly as their lesson plans often have to be shown to their school mentors and university tutor). However, this three-step sequence presents too rational a description of how experienced teachers plan lessons. Research studies of how experienced teach-ers plan lessons, reveal that they give most attention in their planning time to thinking about the content, materials and activities that will be used to make ‘a lesson’, without explicitly starting with a list of objectives to be achieved. In large measure, this refl ects the fact that experienced teachers have internalised the process of planning to such an extent that they can draw heavily upon routines and established practice without the need for much overt conscious reference to lesson objectives themselves.
In considering the selection of learning activities, a useful distinction can be made between content and lesson organisation. With regard to content, the most important consideration is to take account of what pupils already know. The lesson must start
‘where the pupils are’. This means not only ascertaining their present knowledge, understanding and skills concerned with the topic in hand, but also building upon any related or relevant knowledge and interests. Of particular importance is the need to check rather than presuppose that pupils have the necessary level of knowledge, under-standing and skills that are needed for the lesson to successfully achieve the intended outcomes. If a lesson builds upon work covered in a previous lesson given some time ago, some revision may be necessary, along with an explanation of how the work in hand will relate to the previous work. In most subject areas, each topic is gradually developed and extended by being met periodically within a course. Such a procedure of periodic development linked by revision is particularly effective in allowing the structure of knowledge to be consolidated in the pupil’s memory, and it is a common feature of many subject textbooks.
With regard to lesson organisation, a host of concerns are involved during planning.
Of prime importance is the need to ensure that the type of activity to be used is right for the type of learning that is desired (Borich, 2007; Good and Brophy, 2003). For example, if the teacher wishes to extend pupils’ oral skills, then pupils must be given opportunities to talk. The single biggest danger facing teachers is to slip into an inform-ing mode of teachinform-ing when such a mode is not the most effective way to promote the intended objectives of the lesson. Indeed, the fact that pupils learn more effectively by doing rather than listening, indicates that a greater emphasis should be given to pupil involvement and activity across the curriculum than is typical at present.
The planning of a lesson is also an important opportunity to think carefully about the way in which the educational objectives to be achieved may need to be broken down into conceptually appropriate steps, each of which may require practice and
KEYCLASSROOMTEACHINGQUALITIESANDTASKS 89 tion. In terms of the sequencing of activities within a lesson, the most basic sequence for a lesson is one which has a beginning (in which the topic is introduced), a middle (comprising the main learning activities) and an end (which may review the learning which should have occurred). The underlying rationale for the choice of activities and their precise sequencing needs to take account of attentiveness, receptiveness and appropriateness.
Another key point about the planning of lesson organisation is that the outline of a lesson must always be fl exible. The ability to extend parts of a lesson further than originally intended, or even to omit certain elements and tasks when appropriate, is essential. Teachers always need to be ready to modify their plans in the light of how the lesson progresses, and to have additional tasks at hand if the work is completed by some or all of the pupils before the end of the lesson.
Finally, in planning lesson organisation, one needs to take account of the learning environment in terms of the tone or atmosphere created. Above all, it needs to be borne in mind that learning, with its risk of failure, is an emotionally charged and high-risk process. Learning thus needs to be carefully nurtured and supported. Some activities are more high risk than others and the teacher needs to be alert to this. The learning environment generated in a lesson is in part a refl ection of the style of rela-tionship that develops between teacher and pupils. In order to establish the kind of classroom climate the teacher wants, consideration needs to be given to how the choice of learning activities and disciplinary strategies will infl uence this. What is important to note here, is that the tone of the learning environment may have a marked impact on the effectiveness of achieving certain educational outcomes in certain contexts.
With regard to planning how the success of a lesson is to be evaluated, a teacher needs to build in strategies that will enable the progress of the lesson to be monitored, and to assess such learning after the lesson. Given the importance of quick corrective feedback to facilitating pupil learning and to ensure that the progress of the lesson maintains its effectiveness, the teacher needs to be continually assessing pupils’ learning by checking their work, asking questions and responding to diffi culties. More forma-lised assessment made on the basis of tests and marking homework provides both the teacher and pupils with feedback about progress. A careful match of learning experi-ences with such assessment is important in the cause of fairness to the pupil and in order to achieve a valid measure of progress.
At this point some attention must be given to the role of lesson notes. Compiling an outline of a lesson in terms of notes about the aims of the lesson, the sequence, timing and type of learning activities to be used and details of the learning materials (including textbooks, worksheets and equipment) serves a number of extremely important func-tions. First, it forces the teacher to consider the logistics of successfully implementing the plan of a lesson. For example, it becomes immediately apparent whether too much or too little time is available for the intended learning activities. Second, such outlines provide a script to which the teacher can refer during the lesson to check on what should come next. Third, they can alert the teacher to activities and aspects of the lesson that will require preparation in advance, such as the need to ensure that equip-ment and resources are available. Fourth, lesson notes can usefully include the ques-tions that the teacher intends to ask, the answers expected and the correct answers and results, all of which will enable marking and feedback to progress smoothly. Fifth, they provide the teacher with a record of the lesson that can be referred to and modi-fi ed for future use.
Making lesson notes is so useful as part of planning effectively, that it is an essential activity for student teachers. Among experienced teachers, however, the use of lesson notes varies extensively, in part because such formalised planning is time consuming and in part because experienced teachers have largely developed the ability to speedily envis-age a script for a lesson and to teach as though all was well planned and prepared.
Careful planning is also needed to ensure that effective use is made of teaching assis-tants, learning support assistants and other adults who may be contributing to the lesson, including team or collaborative teaching with other teachers. A key feature here is on clarifying as much as possible the tasks and roles that the other adults are expected to carry out.
When making use of teaching outside the classroom, such as fi eldwork and visits to museums, there is a danger than one can assume that almost all the educational benefi t will arise directly from the visit itself. In fact, a signifi cant amount of the educational benefi t derives from how well the lessons before and after the visit are planned to prepare for and build upon the visit.
Finally, in planning lessons, one has to make sure that the demands placed on oneself as teacher and on the pupils are sensible and realistic. It may seem odd to state that a staple diet of apparently excellent and exciting lessons would not be desirable. Both teachers and pupils need to have a curriculum that gives opportunities for low-key demands, during which they can take a mental breather, as well as periods when the demands on the teacher and pupils are very high. Such considerations apply not only to the whole-school week, but also to individual lessons. Lessons more than about 40 minutes in length, will certainly benefi t from containing a mixture of learning activities and demands in this way, if the mental health of teachers and pupils are to be protected.