6 Key Teacher Pre-Class Preparation
Before even going into the classroom, there are certain key things that a teacher needs to prepare and have ready. Without the pre-class preparation, the potential of the class can never be reached, with the likelihood of disengagement occurring in class. Preparation is key in every industry, and especially so in education!
We will cover 5 key things all teachers should prepare before stepping into the classroom. These 5 things are universal throughout teaching, no matter the level, ability, age, background or any other facets of the students.
In this blog, we will cover the following topics:
Preparing the Lesson
Knowing the Students
Reward
Materials
Practice, Practice, Practice!
Arriving Early
Preparing the Lesson
One of the key things is the preparation of the lesson. Depending on the type of education industry you are working in, you may need to prepare your own content or use pre-made content. You may be preparing to a book or an exam, or preparing freely. Regardless of the style, the same key consideration comes into play when preparing, how will the students be able to understand and apply the topic, as well as how will they be engaged in the topic?
Objectives: When preparing the lesson, be aware of the objectives for the lesson. All objectives will have to be SMART objectives. Objectives will also have to meet the timeframe, as well as be in sync with the rest of the semester/years content. This is key for long term development.
Activities: Regardless of what is being taught, different activities will be needed in the lesson. This is students will tend to have different modalities of learning. Having some variation of activities in the lesson will help reinforce the topic in different ways, as well as allow engagement to be high.
For more information on activity design, check out our training:
https://www.thetrainersquared.com/training-packages/p/activity-design
Scaffolding: When designing about the lesson, it is important to scaffold appropriately. Creating a lesson which is too easy or too difficult will lead to annoyance and boredom from the students. As with Goldilocks porridge, the lesson has to be just right. as Vygotsky’s theory mentioned, this is working within the student’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Working within the ZPD will allow learning to be more enjoyable and easier.
This can be a bit difficult if you are not creating the lessons and have been given a pre-made package. However, it is not impossible and the lessons can still be scaffolded to match the students need, as well as allowing meeting the objectives.
For more information on how to ZPD and scaffolding, see our training on it:
https://www.thetrainersquared.com/training-packages/p/scaffolding-lessons
Put In: The warm up may also act as the starting point where the trainer is feeding some information to the trainees. However, it is important to note that this should not be the new information yet, but rather information from previous training that may be linked to this training.
Knowing the Students
Before heading into the lesson, it is important to know as much about the student as possible. The following should be known about the students:
Age & Number of Ss: How many students will be in the classroom? How many are normally in the classroom. This is something a new teacher should know as if it’s a common classroom, the teacher will already know the age and quantity.
Abilities: Even if classes are organized by the students level of the subject matter, there will still be a range of students in the classroom. A teacher should always know the ability, behavior, likes and dislikes of the students. This is as it will allow the teacher to foster a connection with the students, thus increasing engagement and motivation for the students.
Knowing their abilities will allow the teacher to differentiate tasks beforehand, meeting the need of each student. Differentiating tasks will mean the objectives and content will still be met by all, but via different routes.
See our training on task differentiation for more information:
https://www.thetrainersquared.com/training-packages/p/task-differentiation
Some other important aspect of knowing the students will be knowing the dynamics of the classroom before going in, such as who are friends with who, who sits where and why and other dynamics which may have an effect on the overall classroom.
Good information about the students will help any teacher build rapport, plan fun activities, manage behavior and create effective rewarding systems for the class.
Rewarding
Something that often get overlooked for class preparation is the rewarding system. Most teacher may give a simple point or star system, which can be useful if it has value. However, if there’s no value to this, then the majority of students will eventually turn away from this system.
The idea of using a reward system is that it can stimulate the student’s learning, social interaction and team work if rewarding in group and their friendly competition side. There are a few different types of reward systems that can be used, with some running concurrently.
Long Term Reward System: Using a long term reward system can help students see the progress over time, with reaching a target having a value for the students. For example, the first to get to 500 points win a prize. A long term reward system can also help students with improvement in attitude, performance, effort and behavior.
Generic Reward System: The most common system in place is a generic reward system, with students getting points on the board. This can become boring for the students and can have a potential adverse effect. This can be made more exciting to gain points, for example a dart system on the board with a sticky ball thrown to get a random number of points, or a lucky dip. This allows the break up of the lesson and keeping engagement high for the students.
Lesson Specific Rewarding System: One fun way of using a reward system is to have lesson specific reward systems in class. For example if the lesson is about learning body parts, then the reward system may be after each X points, the individual/team picks a body part, with the objective of building a complete body. This essentially allows ‘learning without learning’. Whilst this can be extremely fun and creative for both students and teacher, it does take a lot of preparation time and limited only to that lesson, or similar lessons.
Whichever rewarding a teacher may decide to go with, it is important that one is prepared before any class. This will help with motivation, engagement and interaction.
For a training on the basics of rewarding, get our training on operant conditioning:
https://www.thetrainersquared.com/training-packages/p/operant-conditioning
Materials!
One of the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a teacher is not having enough of the material. This may be not enough glue or ruler or worksheets or whatever material is needed. When preparing a lesson, the following needs to be considered for materials:
Quantity: One of the basics is having enough of the material needed for class. It is recommended to always have a tiny surplus, just in case of damages, lost etc. Other consideration must be considered, for example if using scissors, how many left handed students do you have?
Quality: It is not good enough to have enough of the material. It is important to check that the materials work well. This means that things like glues are sticking or worksheets are correct.
A teacher should always look through their schedule beforehand and make sure they are able to prepare their materials on time. Remember technology (audio and video) can also fail in the classroom, so it is important to have a backup!
Practice, Practice, Practice!
Once everything is gathered, it is important to learn the lesson well. This means knowing where the objectives of the lesson can be met, knowing what teacher talk to use in the lesson, knowing where the clickable are, knowing the transition from slide to slide, knowing the timing of each section and knowing the interaction patterns for the activities.
It is recommended that if a lesson is a little difficult or unfamiliar, then practice should take place in the classroom, emulating a real classroom environment.
Practice doesn’t mean creating a script for the lesson, it just means being prepared and actually the more practice one has, the more fluid one can be within a lesson.
Arriving Early
One recommendation is to always be in class before the lesson. Being in the actual classroom before the lesson allows time to interact with the students, as well as time to ensure materials, such as computer, screen, projector, speakers etc. are all working.
Arriving early (around 10 minutes) will help with the following:
Seating plan preparation
Building rapport with the students
Visualizing the teaching ‘stage’, knowing when and where activities will happen
Getting the reward system ready
Resolving any tech/material issues before any class time
For further reading or development on teaching skills, see our list of teaching training packages.
If you don’t see a training that you or your team need, please let us know!
