Pacing

On Tuesday 12-13-11, I taught for the first time in a high school classroom. Earlier this year I was in a middle school classroom, but I was moved about two and a half weeks ago to the high school. After two and a half years of work at the middle school level, I tried my hand at an 11th grade classroom. Big day.

I wrote a lesson plan, guided by my co-teacher's instructional pattern, which I hoped would lead them towards a greater knowledge of the text Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and of the literary element of "theme." My adviser, Dr. Mary Ellen Beaty-O'Ferrall had a few criticisms which I will work with in separate posts. The first of these suggestions was to focus on pacing.

This criticism came from my getting through most of the content for the day, however, not completing all the practice on theme. Half-way through class I knew I would not get through all my content. This was distressing, but I tried to stick with it and move more swiftly through the material. I got through most of it, but the underlying problem still needs to be addressed.

In my need for suggestions, I turn first to Teach Like a Champion.  Fortunately for me, Lemov has an entire chapter dedicated to Pacing.  Here I will list and briefly explain the techniques related to pacing which I believe will work for me in my situation.  The first is titled "Changing the Pace."  This technique focuses on having many activities in a single lesson dedicated to a single topic.  In this way, the students have an opportunity to switch from active to passive occupations and can refocus on the topic of the day.  I think this would improve student attention and focus as well as helping me keep the lesson moving along productively. 

The next technique is a very simple one called "Bright Lines."  This technique has teachers clearly highlighting start and end points of activities to improve student engagement and teacher pacing.  This can be done as easily as giving a specific time-frame for an activity.  A possible example of this could be: "Everyone take two minutes to read the selection then look up to show me you are done. Ready?  Go!"  This gives students a clear idea of the start and end point, engages them almost as if it were a race, and keeps you as a teacher accountable as to when you need to move on to another activity.  Easy to implement, but a good and necessary prompting to remember. 

"All Hands" seems to be a peppy way of moving from one student to another rapidly to keep students on their toes when working on a longer activity when "Changing the Pace" is not appropriate.  Similar to "Bright Lines," this is a technique I already use, but could improve my adherence to maintaining.

"Every Minute Matters" focuses on using the last few minutes as a review of the day's most salient topics.  Phylis was a key advocate of this without using its name.  She told us the worst and most useless way to end a presentation, lesson, activity, conversation, or anything (within reason) is to ask for questions.  It is a very passive and easily avoided assessment of student knowledge.  My co-teacher does this very well by asking students to report something they liked or found interesting from the lesson, something they didn't like or care about, and something they still had a question about from the lesson.  By answering these questions, students may earn tickets which get them out of one homework assignment.  My goal will be to try her technique and a few others to have daily review sessions.

The last technique I will talk about here is called "Looking Forward."  This technique holds that creating mystery by foreshadowing what will come later in the lesson or in the coming days can increase tension and attention of the students involved. 

If you have any suggestions for how to improve my pacing and thus my teaching, please leave me your ideas below.  Thank you for reading.