How to devise a good strategy for students’ understanding.

An educator’s job is a tough one. With so much to do, teachers tend to ignore certain things that can completely change their and their students’ lives. Lesson planning is one of them. Many educators maintain records of what they cover in the class on a regular basis. However, that’s less a lesson plan and more a journal of what they did in a class of 40 minutes.

Lesson planning is more elaborate. It includes objectives – what the students can do once they finish the lesson – and a step by step outline of how they tend to achieve their class goals. These goals can be set for the short term, midterm and long term. While short-term goals are limited to what you wish to achieve on a regular basis, mid-term and long-term goals are what you hope to achieve after self-reflection, students’ feedback, experimenting with the way you teach in the class and continuous efforts for the desired outcomes.

There are a lot of things that must be taken into consideration when working on a lesson plan. These factors can be the age group of the students you are teaching, the resources that are being used and the opportunities you can provide the student. Some suggested practices are:

• Creating a good environment: The ambience in the classroom plays a crucial role in meeting your class goals. It is important to have a healthy and friendly classroom environment. Ensure that students get along with each other so that they can collaborate on projects. Establish classroom rules and see that they are being followed by all students.
• Learning objectives: Before starting on any subject, it is crucial that you are prepared at your end. This is not limited to the subject matter but should include a complete understanding of the subject, its various applications, what students need to understand and what they should know when the class is over. These three questions answered in this sequence can improve your lesson plans to a great extent. Having this done will make the goal clear for you. Also, you can plan the class activities better once you have understood the focus and scope of the course.
• Teaching plan: The next part that determines the success of lesson planning is the activities and the way students will be taught. It is important to realise that the best planned lesson is of no use if interesting delivery procedures, along with good classroom management techniques, are not employed. You can start by having various methods to explain a single topic as not all students may understand a single explanation. Another way is to use multimedia resources and share resources in advance with students, ask them to prepare a few questions on the topic and then begin discussing it. There are several ways to engage students on a variety of topics. There are several resources online to borrow ideas from for activities that you can include in your classroom. The only limit is your imagination.
• What students want: You must talk to your students and find out what their expectations from the class are. Get to know how they like to learn and what the activities they enjoy the most are. When students enjoy their learning, they are motivated to perform better and you can bring out the best in them.
• Hands-on learning: Including a few activities in your classroom regularly can change the learning experience for students to a great extent. For instance, feedback on the topic being discussed. This can be done in multiple ways, be it a multiple choice question activity that you can conduct or a group based activity where a group of students have to summarise their understanding of the topic. If your school works on a BYOD (bring your own device) set-up, make use of social media. Decide on a hashtag for a topic and ask students to post a tweet on the topic everyday mentioning the hashtag and tagging the official class account. A short assessment at the end of the topic can also help you gauge the extent of your students’ understanding. Again, you can assess students in group projects, asking them to make a presentation, through an oral test or in any other way your class enjoys responding to the most.

These are a few ways that can help your lesson plans work wonders. As a teacher you must not forget that the key to success is dedication and persistence. The development of fruitful lesson plans takes a lot of time and effort. Also, it is important to keep experimenting and giving each new experiment adequate time to show results.