Planning Issues

This section of the site looks at two of the particular difficulties which trainees sometimes encounter in their planning and evaluation of lessons.

1. Thinking it through

This section focuses on the problems which trainees sometimes encounter in making sure that the stated objectives for the lesson actually feature in the lesson itself in a meaningful and focused way, and that the evaluation of the lesson also 'follows through' on the initial objectives, and relates back to them. In the last round of HMI inspection of initial training, one criticism was that sometimes trainees' objectives were very vague and general, and that they were lost sight of in the lesson itself and the evaluation of the lesson.

The pages that follow are taken from a booklet by Martin Hunt, 'Thinking it Through', which was designed to help trainees who were having problems with following objectives through the teaching and learning process in a meaningful way. Whereas Chapter 3 of the book focuses on the whole breadth of things to think about when putting together a lesson, Martin's booklet concentrated on history specific objectives, and the importance of 'tracking them through' so that the planning-teaching-evaluation-revised planning and teaching 'loop' is a coherent and purposeful one, and that the time consuming business of formulating learning objectives does not become a vague and not very useful web of good intentions.

Link to 'Thinking it Through' pages

2.Evaluations

This is another area which some trainees find problematic and exasperating. Given that you need to evaluate all your lessons, how do you avoid repetition, and formulaic responses? What can be a crucially valuable part of getting better as a history teacher, and learning from your own practice, can sometimes seem like a tedious and pointless chore, with trainees writing things just to show they have done an evaluation, rather than doing something which they feel is worth the time and thought involved. The section attempts to give some guidance on how to avoid formulaic, insincere and repetitive evaluations.

Link to 'Evaluation' pages

In addition to these sections of the site, Teaching History No. 99 (May 2000) is given over entirely to planning issues.

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