The Basic Principles of Teaching

In a formal classroom or seminar environment, proceed as follows:

1. Tell them what you are going to be telling them.

2. Tell them.

3. Tell them what you have just told them.

It helps, especially with beginner students, if you do not expect a multiplicity of outcomes from a single lesson. Depending on the complexity of the elements concerned, consider it a success if, at the end of the lesson, the class has absorbed three solid points.

Our lessons used to be forty minutes, minus a certain amount of initial disruption as the students arrived and got themselves organised, so that made 36 minutes / (3 x 3) points = 4 minutes per iteration of each point.

That was all subconscious as far as I was concerned. I used to take my cues from class reaction as to how well a point was going over, and extemporise when I felt a point needed more explanation. I learned at a very early stage that the detailed lesson planning required of you in teacher training college would get you precisely nowhere. As the man said, "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." Or as the other man said, "Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the face."