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<\/a><\/p>\nIt was an hour later before I finally crawled into bed, but that new lesson, presented the next morning, turned out to be just the “Ohhhhh… I get it!” step that had been missing in my students’ understanding in previous years.They still weren’t ready to run out and develop the DicussionBoard program completely on their own just yet, but they had a much better idea of the method behind the madness when their programs executed an otherwise arcane-looking SQL query.<\/p>\n
Now you probably don’t teach Computer Science and those five or six paragraphs above may be a bit arcaane themselves, but the point is this: planning what we do in the classroom is, for me, a vital step in improving my effectiveness as a teacher. Without planning I can certainly walk into the classroom and speak extemporaneously, and if I’m lucky and the material isn’t too technical, my brighter kids will be able to pick up most of what I’m talking about.<\/p>\n
But to be most effective, we need to carefully consider the logical steps that will help our students build their understanding of a topic. That kind of careful consideration comes with planning, and (in the example above) comes with reflecting on plans that have been delivered in the past.<\/p>\n
Lesson planning is a good first step, but it needs to be followed by reflection on the effectiveness of the lesson as well, and with a willingness to improvise as required. Lesson planning doesn’t mean that we are required to strictly adhere to those plans, lock-step and with no awareness or consideration of how students are responding to the experience.<\/p>\n
But it’s a good first step to delivering great instruction, and will provide a jumping off point for furter development and exploration of your teaching strategies.<\/p>\n
Whether it’s notes on paper, a text file on the computer, or a PowerPoint presentation, planning instruction will make you a better teacher.<\/p>\n
Give it a try!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DYNAMIC RESPONSE VS. LESSON PLANNING Richard White 2013-04-27 “We plan now so we can improvise later.” Tuesday had been a decent day with the students in my Computer Science class. After having taken a few days to work through the concept of a flat-file database, and writing a small AddressBook.py program that would manage their … Continue reading Dynamic Response vs. Lesson Planning<\/span>