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3. Consolidating your learning

3.1. Planning and reflecting on learner-centred teaching

Activity 6.2: Analysing teaching

Working with a colleague, plan a lesson that you will teach next week. Make sure that the lesson meets as many of the learner-centred teacher criteria as you can and that it includes at least three of the approaches you worked on last year: questioning, pair work, using local resources, group work, role-play, games and storytelling, involving all, eliciting prior knowledge, assessment for learning, and monitoring and feedback. 

In your Teacher Notebook, write the criteria your lesson will aim to meet. Remember, it might not be possible to meet all the criteria in every lesson, but during a week you should try to meet them all.

After the lesson, go back to your lesson plan and reflect on the list of learner-centred teaching criteria you thought the lesson would address:

  • Did your lesson meet all the criteria you had planned?
  • If not, what could you have done differently in your lesson?

You have already engaged with some activities included in the Managing and supporting learner-centred classrooms resources. You will find that the TESSA resources have examples of classroom activities and resources that will help you to meet the criteria set out above. Don’t forget to refer to these materials if you need ideas for your lessons!

Activity 6.3: Reflecting on learner-centredness

Once you have taught the lesson that you planned with a colleague, work together as a larger group to consider these questions:

  • Which criteria were easy to meet?
  • Which criteria are more challenging?

As a group, try and identify one practical example to demonstrate each criterion. For example:

  • A teacher might have found a way to include a child with specific difficulties (believes that all learners can learn given the right support).
  • Someone might have a particularly creative example of an activity that engages all learners.
  • Someone who teaches older children might have found an imaginative way of relating the curriculum to learners’ lives.

Record an example next to each of the criteria. Try to make the examples as detailed as possible, so that someone else would be able to do the activity in their class.