3.12.1 The Steps Involved In the Preparation of A Lesson

So many textbooks have been written about teaching—so many points of view have been advanced—such a variety of terminology has been employed, even in the expression of a single educational notion—that beginning teachers are frequently at a loss to know just how to set about the task of teaching.

Leaving for further consideration the more purely theoretical aspects of our problem, let us face the questions of most immediate concern:

• How to Prepare a Lesson.
• How to Present a Lesson.

Is there not a common-sense procedure which we can agree to as promising best results in these two fundamental steps? At the outset let us agree that preparation and presentation are inseparable aspects of but one process.

Preparation consists of the work done behind the scenes—presentation involves the getting over of the results of that work to the audience—the class. Frequently teachers are confused because they mistake directions governing preparation as applying to presentation.

For instance, one teacher proceeded to drill a class of small children on the memorizing of the aim—an abstract general truth—unmindful of the fact that the aim was set down for the teacher’s guidance—a focus for his preparation done behind the scenes.

Though in the preparation of a lesson we keep the aim clearly in mind, and though, when we stand before our class, we let it function in the background of our consciousness as an objective in our procedure, we ought not to hurl it at our class.

As a generalized truth it can make but little appeal to young minds, and it ought to be self-evident, at the end of a successful recitation, to mature minds.

And so with the matter of organization. We skeletonize our thoughts behind the scenes, but the skeleton is rather an unsightly specimen to exhibit before a class.

The outline should be inherent in the lesson as presented, but it ought not to protrude so that the means will be mistaken for an end. Subsequent chapters will illustrate both the selection of an aim and its elaboration through suitable organization.

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