Example 4.7: Developing an action plan

Last Tuesday, Monica wrote in her Teacher Notebook, reflecting on the lesson she had just delivered.  

Tuesday 7/9/2020 Grade 2 Social Studies Topic Neighbourhood

I planned a lesson using pair work and questioning where students had to first describe to each other where they lived and their neighbours.  I started with some questions to draw out important features of the neighbourhood: How many close neighbours do you have? How many shops are there nearby? Where can you catch a bus? Then I put them in pairs. While one was talking, the other had to make notes. Then they each had to write five sentences or draw a picture comparing their neighbourhood with their partners’ and read it to the class.

The successes were:

• for some learners there was a lot of interaction
• there was an information gap so learners had to listen carefully to make notes
• all students could take part.

But there were also problems:

• it was difficult to manage a large class of 62 learners
• the learners who find writing and drawing difficult got frustrated and couldn’t keep up
• there was a big problem with time management
• I realised that my questions were all closed questions. If I had asked things like ‘what do you like about your neighbourhood’ or ‘what would you like to change’ in the introduction, they would have thought more deeply about it and given better descriptions.

Way forward

From this I learned that:

• I need to think about how to better organise my pairs so that all learners can be involved
• I need to be more careful about time management.

My action plan is as follows:

1. My focus is on how I manage the pairs and my time management skills.
2. Plan my questions more carefully to promote thinking
3. Give learners a plan to work from on the board – eg number of people, ages, family relationships, animals – this will help all them keep to the task
4. Mix the pairs up so that the learners who lose interest or attention, or who find writing difficult are not together
5. Give them clear time warnings for switching roles, and when to start writing the sentences. Let them finish the sentences for homework.
6. Think about how to combine pair work with other approaches.

Activity 4.11: Developing an action plan

Like Monica, focus on an element of your recent teaching that you find challenging. You could focus on one or several of the teaching approaches. Write an action plan like the one in Example 4.7 to help you. Share your plan with a colleague.

Keep a clear record of your lessons and action plan so that you can revisit them. It’s important to write clear notes in your Teacher Notebook; hopefully it will have details of your successes (so you can try them again), your challenges (so that you can learn from them) and ideas you have got from your colleagues.