Plan the lesson backwards from the question you will ask

The usual lesson plan starts with a topic: "today, quadratic equations." It ends when the period does. Whether anyone can now solve one is discovered later, in a test, when it is too late to do anything about it.

Start from the evidence you want

Write the question first: the specific one a student who understood the lesson can answer and a student who did not cannot. Not "do they understand quadratics", which is not a question, but an actual item you could put in front of them in the last five minutes. Everything upstream of it is then decided by whether it helps a student answer that question.

This is a filter, and it is brutal in a useful way. The digression you enjoy explaining, the historical aside, the third example that repeats the second: put each next to the end question and most of them fall out on their own.

The three-part shape it produces

• The end question, written before anything else, on the plan, in its final wording.
• The minimum a student needs to answer it, which is usually far less than the textbook section covers. This is the explanation, and it should be the shortest part of the session, not the longest.
• Practice that gets progressively closer to the end question. This is the bulk of the time, and the part most tutors cut when the session runs late, which is exactly backwards.

What changes in the room

You stop finishing sessions on "we'll continue next time" without knowing what "this time" achieved. You get an answer, from everyone, while you can still act on it. And the next session's opening is decided by data rather than by the point at which the previous one happened to run out of clock.

The common failure

Writing an end question that is easier than the lesson. If every student can answer it, it has told you nothing and you have spent five minutes confirming a foregone conclusion. Pitch it at the level you actually claim to have taught, and accept that a poor result is information you paid five minutes for rather than a failure.

Sources

• What Works Clearinghouse — Educator Practice Guides (US Dept. of Education)
• UNESCO — Education