I sometimes practice and time the lecture before hand, but mainly have the most important objectives covered with additional lectures when finishing early.
I plan my class and divide it by our scheduled breaks. If there is extra time at the end I move on if we can make considerable progress into the next portion of the lesson but if not then I discuss the subject with the student and see if he has any questions.
students all learn at different paces so I think that it is good to change the lessons plans and topics all the time to keep students interested
I find that it is important for me to use the short quiz to assess how well my students are grasping the materials that we are discussing. They may be listening, but I need to determine if they are just looking at me or really hearing and understanding what I have said.
I believe and have discovered that limiting the "lecture time" to short segments to be an excellent idea.
kathy,
I agree. It is more important to make sure that the consensus of students are able to comprehend the material, rather than trying to keep an accurate pace with the course lesson plans. In cases where plans have to be revised, it is a good idea to provided the students with a revised topical outline and discuss the changes.
Tremayne Simpson
Billy,
I have adopted the same philosophy. In an effort to maximize the student retention of information, it is best to "lecture" based on the average attention span of the class. On days when there is a lot of material to cover, I try to implement periodic activities, that will segment the lecture.
Tremayne Simpson
Billy,
I agree that it is always a good idea to periodically assess your students. In addition to providing short quizzes, an instructor can do some "Socratic questioning" during the lecture or assign activities that will enable them to apply their subject knowledge.
Tremayne Simpson
I find that I need to assess the student learning style and their commitment to the course couple with course objectives. The lesson plans are constructed with certain triggers for slower or faster content delivery built in tends to keep me on pace
Clifton,
Your lesson plan configuration sounds like an effective method for addressing student learning pace. Once you have assessed your students, do you have to revise the lesson plans and re-distribute or are assignments "generically" categorized so that you can make "seamless" changes?
Tremayne Simpson
I write a board for my students every class that states an objective, a lecture and a demo with points along the way. Next to each thing I post a time frame in which to work from. this helps keep things in line and on pace.
This has been one of my biggest challenges because I generally have more material than the time allows. This causes me to rush at the end and possibly not hit the last points effectively or skip review time. What has helped most is to establish clear objectives and narrow down what the key points are. Probably no more than 3 key points. Have these clearly in mind. Don't lose track of time; include student questions in your time planning. Keep track of how long it takes to get through your average set of teacher notes. Include recap or review at end of session. Still sometimes find myself pushed, so am open to suggestions.
I teach a eight day course for approximately 5 hours per day. I use a daily outline to keep on track. I also use films, quizes, and work sheets that I have the students complete in class, along with homework assignments given at the end of each class. I have my outline structured where I have specific topics that I cover each day. I always make sure thaqt I have enough extra materials like the quizes, worksheets and items mentioned above so that if I finish early I can use this material to finish the day. My course is about 50% lecture and 50% practical applications so I can always have the students do a practical assignment in class. I constantly revidew and revise my outlines and lecture notes to make it a better learning enviroment for the students.
Gregory,
Fitting large amounts of content into a small amount of time is difficult for all instructors. In order to make sure that I am effectively using classtime, I try to combine related topics and discuss them simultaneously, instead of presenting both concepts separately. Once students are able to understand the theoretical relationships, it generally produces a higher-level of information retention and it saves time. Of course this works because I typically teach Communications and many of the theories and processes are inter-related.
Tremayne Simpson
I always plan my lectures to have a few minutes the end, extra to review or answer questions at the end, I would rather to have extra time that to run short of time and not cover all the material> I 'm starting a new class with 4 hours of lecture and I am a little worried about making a class interesting having to be that long.
I am a new instructor and my classes are 3 hours long. I have been trying to break the class into three 50 min segments with a 10 min break in between each one. I try to combine lecture with some sort of game, activity, "pair/share" presentations, or video/online resource. The class meets twice weekly. My biggest challenge seems to be finding the time to prep for this.
olga,
As a suggestion, it may be a good idea to periodically answer questions (after each topic), to ensure that the student are comprehending the class content. They may forget some of the lecture content, after four hours of class.
Tremayne Simpson
Mary ,
Finding prep time for innovative activities, is a common issue for all instructors. Once you have taught the class once, you will now have a lesson plan template for future courses.
Tremayne Simpson
It is more difficult when teaching a class for the first time. Even though I may think my "canned" module may take a certain amount of time, I'm sometimes surprised at how long it actually takes. Or how quickly I get through it. Experience is a good thing!
It can be difficult to manage time when you have inquisitive students in a particular module. I try to encourage all questions and to relate even the wrong answers in the direction of the correct one. When the questions begin to take up a lot of time, I will remind the group of the daily tasks and then make the class portal open for continued discussion of the topics in question.
