This is a silly question to ask: what makes a good lesson?
I have many experiences teaching the same lessons to different groups of students in the same semester, using the same strategies/ methods, while getting different results. Some lessons went really well with one group but did not work for other groups. If I were to control the factors, I would want to make all of my lessons good ones. I wonder if it were me, the groups, or teaching methods that decisively contributed to the results. Factors contributing to good lessons may be complicated.
Once in a while, I was asked to define “good teaching”. This forced me to go back to my recollections of many incidents of observing others teaching. I had witnessed teachers acting like bullying tyrants, nasty and demanding, scaring kids all the way through. Kids were intimidated, harassed, and coerced to participate in some “learning” activities. I had also witnessed teachers teamed up with parents to impose moral burden to kids so that they feel guilty of not performing well academically. Some teachers would do nothing but test-prep, always worksheets. Other teachers would heavily rely on textbooks. I knew one middle school math teacher following an easy, yet irresponsible approach for teaching. He basically assign a number of questions from the end of each chapter in the book for students to explore and to find out the answers. He never bothered teaching or explaining anything to students. His class time was basically spent on assigning tasks, checking answers, and watching movies/videos. I would not consider any of these good teaching examples.
I have observed a fun-loving teacher teaching a subject of money exchange to a first grade class. She played “shopping” games with students and tried to make the lesson fun and engaging. Till the end, she was quickly checking on students’ understanding of money exchange.
Teacher: How many nickels can I exchange for a dollar?
Student A: 100
Teacher: No. Not quite.
Student B: 40
Teacher: No. Not really.
Student C: 10
Teacher: No. Not quite.
Student D: 25
Teacher: No. Not really.
Student E: 20
Teacher: That is correct. Good job!
The teacher then moved on to do other activities.
I was shocked. Didn’t the teacher sense that students actually did not get the idea of money exchange and were simply guessing the answers randomly? That definitely was not good teaching. The teacher should reteach the topic in different way to help kids grasp the concept.
Teaching is in contrast to learning. If good teaching takes place, we can find obvious evidences of successful learning. Fun and engaging experiences will not necessarily be equivalent to good teaching and learning. Ask what exactly you want your students to get and prove they have got it after the lesson. Good lessons, based on such a notion of good teaching, will be a successful experience reaching out to students and helping them significantly achieve the goal(s) of the lesson.
