Teaching is sharing of experiences
that help in better and easy learning. It is not difficult to make someone
understand and remember the text for some time, but it needs rigorous practice
of planning to enable the learner understand the text for a life time. Here
comes the role of planning a lesson.
What is required to plan a lesson?
A book? No. It needs understanding of what the National Curriculum Framework is
expecting us teachers to do in the classroom. Most of the teachers, and for
that matter, the Principal of the school, too isn’t aware of the teaching and
learning objectives given in the National Curriculum Framework. Every Textbook
that NCRT provides has guidelines at the start of the unit that help the
teacher in understanding the objectives laid by the National Curriculum
Framework. But do teachers even care to read those guidelines?
Why are these guidelines important?
Sometimes, a teacher may know about
the topic more than required for his teaching. Sometimes teachers are not aware
of different definitions given by the Education Committee for the same concept.
These guidelines help in limiting and delimiting teachers’ teaching and thus
help the teacher to focus on particular aspects. It is not that teachers cannot
go beyond the given guidelines, but during teaching, these guidelines work as a
trail on which a teacher has to walk and come back.
Once
the guidelines are studied, a teacher understands the objectives of his
teaching. A teacher always divides his objectives on the basis of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The objectives should be divided into remembering, understanding, applying,
analyzing, evaluating and creating. Though these are the main objectives for
achieving any teaching goal, these objectives further can be divided into
smaller goals and larger goals too. Thus, in a lesson plan, then has to be
minimum six objectives.
Once the objectives are derived, a
teacher then needs to find out the skills and the knowledge aspects that he
would like his students to be acquainted with or possess. It is called as
‘Learning Outcomes’. Learning Outcomes always starts with the phrase ‘At the
end of this chapter/unit, the student will be able to …’. Thus learning
outcomes is the direct result of the proposed achievements that are planned in
the previous stage i.e. writing Teaching objectives.
Now your teaching objectives and
learning outcomes are decided, you cannot go to teach in the class. A teacher
has to create a plan to evaluate students’ achievement. This is called as
planning ‘Formative’ and ‘Summative’ assessment. Formative and summative
assessments should be planned keeping in mind the learning outcomes.
Why to plan assessments even before
we teach?
It has been a common trend in India
and most of the countries in Asia to make question papers to check students’ memorization
skills. But memory is not the only skill a teacher wants students to develop.
That is why while planning the assessment, one should be really aware of the
LEARNING OUTCOMES. Because learning outcomes act as a lighthouse for assessment
planning. Our assessment should only assess the skills we are trying to imbibe
in the students. Anything other than that would only give a wrong analysis of
the students’ performance.
Once the foundation is made
(teaching objectives, learning outcomes and Assessments), the actual planning
of ‘what to do when we enter the class’ starts.
A great teacher always creates
curiosity amongst the students before teaching the topic. Curiosity will lead
to making students inquire more, want more, and thus, get more.
How to build the curiosity?
The best way is to tell students
stories, share with them the case studies, share with them your experiences
related to the topic, asking them questions to make them ask more questions.
These all activities come under non-instructional teaching practices, and they
are equally important as teaching practices. Imagine telling the story of the
need of survey in Delhi for the sudden increase of number of women during last
decade. Students will come up with various questions and answers for the same,
and it will give teacher an opportunity to tell them what statistics is, and why
it is required. A good amount of time should be given for ice-breaking. I always
prefer to have an Inquiry Wall in the classroom where students will post their
questions regarding the topic to be learnt.
Gone is the era when teacher used
to teach with lecture, chalk and board. Though we are 21st century
teachers, we have to outlive our own era, we have to try to be the teacher of
22nd century. Keeping in mind different types of learners, we have
to plan different types of teaching methodology. Some of the best methods to
teach students are story-telling, narrating, giving case study, but in each
case, students have to proactively involve. A good teacher always has a bundle
of different activities prepared in advance to take in the classroom. These activities
not only help in engaging the class, but also in going closer to the learning
outcomes.
Each day’s teaching is to be
assessed. Each day a teacher should check whether he/she is teaching properly
and the students are showing the signs of achieving learning outcomes. If not
done on a regular basis, teacher may not realize whether students’ are prepared
for learning the next part of the text. This stage will also help in
understanding the low performers and planning remedial for them.
After learning the concept, a
teacher has to plan what student will explore. A teacher has to show what
activity students will complete to help them explore the material. Activities
such as stations, cooperative learning groups, games, worksheet or other
instructional methods, help in the same.
Once the explanation, teaching is
done, elaborating starts. Elaborating, in education, is independent practice.
Students should be given many activities where they will get opportunities to
apply the knowledge and the skills they achieved during the teaching-learning
process. These activities should help the children apply the learning in
variety of situations. This work has to be done in the classroom and also at
home.
Evaluation is the end stage in most
of the lesson plans. But according to me, it has to be a stage at the each
stage of learning. We have to evaluate students’ prior knowledge, their
learning abilities, their skills, etc. Thus evaluation is not something to be
taken only at the end. But yes, formative and summative assessment will help in
evaluating students’ understanding of the concept and thus, in making a new
plan to achieve the teaching objectives. Daily evaluation should be done in the
form of an EXIT SLIP where a teacher will make a chit with a question written
on it, and the students have to answer it in the end of the session.
Being a teacher is easy, making
people call you a great teacher is challenging. Only great planning will ease
the journey from ‘A Teacher’ to an ‘Awesome Teacher’.
