Day 3 The Days of Reflection
Being Weakly Precise
I’m approaching this from a lesson planning perspective. When learning to teach we can plan plan and plan. After years of experience, we need to plan less as some skills become embedded. One of those skills is precision. It arcs back to the lesson objectives or… What do I want my students to learn/achieve today? If nothing else this should be at the forefront of your mind when teaching your lesson. If you always keep the objectives in mind you should be able to guide your students back on track should they start to stray off topic.
Experience can also embed another skill, one which weakens the precision in teaching to the specification. This occurs when the teacher is thinking “What have I got planned for this lesson”. Usually, the planned lesson should link to the objectives but if you have planned a series of activities to maintain pace it is entirely possible that the activities may lead students away from the lesson focus if you as the teacher are focussed purely on the students just engaging in the activities and then moving on to the next. At the end of the lesson, students may have been engaged and should have made progress… but have they made progress as specified in the objectives. If progress is not clearly linked to the objectives (and this specification) there is a risk that despite securing sound knowledge and receiving excellent formative assessment feedback from you, they may perform poorly in a summative test set by the exam board. This is demoralizing for both you and your students.
Returning to the focus of today’s reflection: make the point and stick to it. Stay precise!