A brief course in the teaching process

by George D. Strayer

15. What rules would you make on the first day of school for the guidance of your pupils?

16. What is the relation of good teaching to good class management?

17. If a majority of the class are misbehaving, where would you expect to find the cause?

CHAPTER XVI
LESSON PLANS

The best teachers never reach the point where preparation for the day’s work is unnecessary. The teacher who stimulates her pupils to their best effort must herself be interested in the work in hand. If nothing new in material or method is found to vary the work, interest soon lags. The lesson often repeated is as dry and lacking in power to interest or inspire as the proverbial sermon taken from the barrel. Even when a teacher has taught a most successful lesson, it is dangerous to try to repeat that exercise in precisely the same way. The two situations will not be alike. The fact that she tries to repeat will take the edge off the lesson for the teacher, and make it correspondingly dull for the pupils. Young and inexperienced teachers are often most successful because of the zest with which they attack the problems which are new to them. The older teacher may be able to keep a class in order and teach them something with a minimum of preparation; but her best work will be done only when she has planned as carefully as the novice for whom the need of preparation is so apparent.

The subject matter which should be drawn upon for any lesson constantly changes. No two groups of children have had exactly the same varieties of experience; hence the need for varying the approach, as well as the demand for differences in observations, experiments, reading, or other methods employed to bring the data necessary for the solution of their problem before children. Subject matter is growing, is being made all of the time. Last year’s discussion of the geography of Europe, of South America, of Africa, or of Asia will not suffice for this year, because interesting and important events have occurred in these countries during the year intervening. For the wide-awake teacher, even that most exact of the sciences, mathematics, represented by arithmetic in our curriculum, will change; since the number aspect of children’s experience will vary. If spelling means the study of words which are needed for use in written expression, the work in spelling will vary just as surely as the occasions for written expression vary among children. No teacher could, if she would, repeat a series of lessons which deal with natural phenomena. In any field, the need for preparation becomes apparent for one who would command the material which should be made available for children.

In the preparation of a lesson plan the first and in some respects the most important step is to become acquainted with the subject to be taught. There is no method of teaching which can take the place of a thoroughgoing knowledge of the material which bears upon the topic to be treated. The teacher who finds in the life of the children outside of school, in school activities, in books, pictures, magazines, in study and travel, material for her daily class work, will make any course of study vital and interesting to children. In such an atmosphere pupils will grow not only in knowledge, but also in the desire to inquire and investigate and in power to satisfy their intellectual craving.

After the teacher has in hand an abundance of interesting material, the next step in the plan is to organize the data to be presented. Some organization is usually found in textbooks and courses of study, and it is possible simply to try to fit any additional material which may have been collected to the scheme provided. The difficulty with this ready-made organization is found in the fact that it has little or no relation to the needs or problems of the particular group of children to be taught. Any organization which is to be significant to children must take account of their point of view, and attempt to present subject matter in response to the need which they feel for the material to be presented. This is precisely what is meant by the difference between the logical and psychological methods of presenting subject matter. Not that the psychological method is illogical, rather it takes account of the child’s needs and is for him logical beyond the most complete adult logical scheme. It may seem logical to the adult to teach the crayfish by calling attention to the large parts and then to the smaller parts in order, or to deal with the structure of the skeleton, nervous and circulatory systems, connective tissues, and the like. To an eight-year-old child, the problems which will probably be most logical, most satisfying to his desire for investigation, will deal with the way in which the crayfish gets his living, how he protects himself from his enemies, how he brings disaster by making holes in levees, and how important he is as an article of food. In satisfying these childish problems, much of the information which might have been imparted, had the adult scientific order been followed, will be mastered by the pupils. Much more will be remembered, because the information is associated with the solution of interesting problems. It may seem logical in teaching India to a sixth-grade class to treat of prevailing winds, surface features, climate, vegetation, animals, mineral products, and people; but the children whose teacher approached this subject by asking them to try to discover why they have had such terrible famines in India probably remember more of the geography of India to-day than those who followed the adult logical order. In organization, then, the starting point is to get the child’s point of view, to discover his problems, and to organize the material to be presented with reference to these childish aims.

Good organization demands that material presented to satisfy the demand made by the child’s problem be grouped around few coördinate heads.[26] Many topics of equal value in an outline generally indicate a lack of organization, a lack of appreciation of the relation of the various facts to be presented. For example, one might think of a great many facts about plant growth; the seeds must be put in the earth, the weather must be warm enough, they must have water, they need to be hoed, the ground should be fertile, they need air, they grow best when they have sunlight, they may have too much moisture, in rocky ground the soil may not be deep enough, they must not be too close together, weeds and insects must be destroyed, the roots should not be disturbed, the choice of the seed is important, and so on. For a group of lower-grade children there are two problems; namely, (1) what kind of plants do we want, and (2) what can we do to make them grow well. Under the first head would come the plants which are suitable for our conditions of soil and climate, and the question of seed selection. Under the second head the topics will be moisture, sunlight, air, and cultivation, including the destroying of insects or other pests. Each of these topics will be suggested in answer to the problems which have been raised (what plants we want, and how we can make them grow well) by a group of children who have had any experience with growing plants. If any important topic is omitted, the teacher will call for it by a question which suggests the lack of a complete solution to the problem which is being considered. This brings us to the next step in plan making.