Wednesday, November 12, 2008

How Was My Lesson?

Betty wrote in her post Evaluation Smaluation a link to Was That a Good Lesson? This had me thinking about what kind of mental checklist I use to see if my lesson was successful or not. Here are some things that I look for:

· Did I have all the necessary materials and information?
· Did I introduce the topic so that the students wanted to hear more?
· Did I explain the instructions to the assignment so that the students with different learning styles understood what to do?
· Did the students stay engaged during the lesson?
· Did the students complete the assignment with success?
· Were students able to tell in their own words what they had learned and why they needed to learn it?
· Did the students ask questions that led to further inquiry? Did they want to learn more?
· Did the students offer other topics related to this that they would like to learn about?

Now I wonder if I ask the students to tell me what makes a good lesson in their eyes, what their checklist would look like. Would it not be the same kind of list we make, as teachers, when we attend presentations? When I attend presentations, this is what I would like:

· I want the topic to be interesting.
· I want the presenter to be confident and know the material being presented.
· I want the presenter to be organized and not scattered which automatically puts me off.
· I want to be involved, which for me, means more than just lecturing.
· I want to be encouraged to ask questions and if the presenter doesn’t know the answer, that he/she admits to not knowing.
· I want what I’m learning to be relevant to what I am doing in my life at this time.
· I want to be motivated to learn more.
· I want to have something at the end that I can take with me and use (not necessarily something tangible, but even some kind of knowledge)

What would be on your list for a successful lesson? Do you agree or disagree with my list? Please let me know.

1 comment:

Nic Mobbs said...

Pat, thanks for sharing this. It's a great question - and one I plan to put to my classes tomorrow!