Prepare a lesson

Lesson Plan Example

• Learning Objective: By the end of the lesson the students will understand how Jesus dealt with prejudice and be aware of how Christians have battled and compromised on the issue of prejudice over the centuries.
• Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to describe an incident in the life of Jesus which involved prejudice and be able to name an historical Christian figure who has battled against prejudice.
• Differentiated Learning: One student has difficulty with understanding spoken English so the key questions, and group and individual tasks will be written down in advance and given to the student to read at their own pace.
• Key vocabulary: prejudice, parable, Samaritan, Pharisee.
• Lesson content:
  1. Opening attention grabber (3 minutes).
     Handing out sweets to some students in a highly prejudiced way!
  2. What do students already know about prejudice (5 minutes).
     Simple questions to the class about their experiences of prejudice.
  3. What do we mean by prejudice (5 minutes)?
     Following on with the question ‘what is prejudice’ ... “I’ll write your thoughts up here and we’ll come back to them at the end of the lesson and see which ones work best.”
  4. Christian stories of fighting prejudice (20 minutes).
     Group work and reporting back to the class.
  5. The parable of the Good Samaritan (20 minutes).
     Individual reflective task.
  6. Summary and questions (5 minutes).

Arriving for the lesson

Make sure you have the exact details of when and where the lesson is. If you are not in school already that day, arrive at least half an hour before the lesson is due to start, so you know where the room is and can check you have all the resources you need.

Developing and finding resources

If you are taking lessons as a visitor, you’ll want your lessons to be exciting and engaging, full of good exercises and activities. But where do you find these resources? You’ll discover links to many good web sites at schoolsworkwork.co.uk, together with our Resource Toolkit, a searchable database of good ideas for lessons and assemblies. You can also use the Community Blog to ask other schools workers for help in finding the right materials.

Classroom Behaviour Management

Keeping control is a necessary skill for effective teaching. It shows students you know what you are doing and that they need to pay attention to you. Some classes will need almost no behaviour management, others will be incredibly demanding from the beginning of the lesson right to the end! There’s no substitute for experience and most schools workers will find they grow in their ability to engage with a difficult class over time. There are some excellent books on behaviour management including one listed in the schoolswork.co.uk’s resource 10 Books Every Schools Worker Should Read.

However, it is the teacher who is ultimately in control of the class and so you will want to talk with them beforehand about how much control you want them to assert during your lesson. Some teachers are more pro-active with this than others! Better to know what the score is before the class start a full-scale riot!

Remember that praise is more powerful than criticism. Aim to encourage students to behave well and engage with your lesson by responding positively to their contributions, even if they are incorrect. For example: “That’s an interesting idea, but I’d think of it like this...” is better than “No, that’s wrong!”

Evaluation

It’s good practice to evaluate your lesson in order to learn how to be more effective in teaching. For example, you could:

• Ask a team member to sit in on your lesson and then reflect on it with you afterwards.
• Ask a retired teacher from your church to observe a lesson and give you feedback.
• Ask the teacher whose lesson you are taking for feedback.

Some general do’s:

• Observe experienced teachers. Once staff in the school realise you are serious about wanting to be able to communicate effectively with students and you want to develop your teaching skills, most teachers will happily welcome you into their classes.
• If you work in a team, start off supporting a more experienced team member, and gradually increase the amount of the lesson that you lead.
• Reading other lesson plans, even for completely different subjects, will help you get the idea of how to prepare better ones for your self.
• Keep taking lessons and don’t give up, even if some experiences are difficult or discouraging. Taking lessons is a great privilege for Christian schools workers and the young people we meet deserve the very best we can offer.

Feel free to use and distribute this guide but please acknowledge schoolswork.co.uk as the source.