Beginning teachers almost always begin their first lesson by including too many components: a definition, a demonstration, several examples, multiple practice questions, a discussion, and a review. This seems the most efficient use of a single teaching practice, but it usually results in a mess. Your first lesson should do less and be more effective. Narrow the objective to a very specific, measurable target, so that you can demonstrate that learners have met it by the end of the session: a concept can be defined in the learners’ own words, a single type of task can be performed correctly, a sentence can be written using the appropriate structure. With a clear goal, your instruction will be simpler, your examples will be focused, and the practice will not feel like a random sampling.
The lesson objective should be stated, preferably orally, in a single sentence before it is presented to learners. When you do not have a clear understanding of your goal for a lesson in this manner, your lesson will appear just as nebulous. A broad objective, such as “Understand fractions,” will be too expansive to effectively present in a brief period. In contrast, the objective of “compare one-half and one-third with drawings” provides an easily understandable goal for both instructors and learners. In the context of a lesson with this clearly defined objective, teachers can focus their instruction on one skill to present in the classroom. The lesson itself would be divided into three moves: show, try, check.
It’s tempting for new teachers to spend long periods in “lecture mode” and give little time for learners to practice skills during their first lesson, because it’s easy to feel comfortable standing in front of a class for 30 minutes and talking. Long periods of explanation usually don’t work in practice and can actually inhibit student understanding. A few minutes into long explanations, learners begin to drift, and key content gets buried in unnecessary language. If you find yourself speaking for too long before asking learners to try skills, try to limit explanations to half their typical length and focus more on examples to illustrate the point. If you are teaching punctuation, do not lecture on every rule around commas.
A 15-minute lesson plan with a single goal in mind can help beginning teachers maintain focus and stay organized. Start by writing the lesson objective (a single sentence) and stating it clearly to the class for the first two minutes while demonstrating one example to the learners. For the next four minutes, the objective is for learners to practice in a “guided” capacity by answering questions or attempting a task that the instructor can correct as they go along. The third part should be five minutes of independent practice with learners attempting the task alone to show the instructor what parts are unclear or confusing. At the end, the last four minutes should be a time for the learners to talk through what they understood and what they were unclear about. Teachers can use this time to think about the lesson they just delivered to themselves and see if they can identify parts that could have been clearer or better illustrated.
The best way to test your lesson plan, especially if you feel you’re stuck, is to “teach” it to yourself by writing out the lesson before you teach it for real. Begin by stating the objective, including one example, asking one question, and making a note of the possible mistake your learners may make. Then ask your question and write the correct answer to it. Review your work, and note anything that is confusing about what you’ve written, such as an example that assumes a lot of background knowledge. If you’re having a difficult time explaining something in class, try to break the example you’re using into more manageable parts. If you’re presenting a more complex task to your class, try to take a single, more simple concept out of that problem to focus the students on that particular task.
The feedback you provide for your teaching is the most important way for you to grow as a teacher. When discussing lessons with an observer after a lesson has been taught, do not ask if the lesson “went well,” or similar phrases. Instead, ask the following questions: “What can the learners do by the end of the lesson that they could not do at the beginning?”, “What were you most unsure of regarding the lesson?”, and “What can you do next time to clarify the part of the lesson that caused confusion?”. When you write a note after the lesson, keep track of the sentence that you used for the best response from students, as well as a sentence that you felt caused more confusion. By using this method, you will build a bank of useful examples that can be reused as well as phrases to avoid when teaching. The most successful teachers are the ones who take every lesson as a trial to be observed, corrected, and repeated with more precision than the last.