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Concourse 2

Delta: meeting the teaching criteria | Section 8

tick the box

plan
exploit
deliver
monitor, check and respond

The criteria explained

nuts and bolts

The nuts and bolts of teaching

The criteria under section 8 refer to the nuts and bolts of the lesson – classroom procedures and techniques.
To meet these criteria, you need to demonstrate that you can plan, support, exploit, deliver and check.

Successful candidates demonstrate that they can effectively:

  1. use procedures, techniques and activities to support and consolidate learning and to achieve language and/or skill aims
  2. exploit materials and resources to support learning and achieve aims
  3. deliver a coherent and suitably varied lesson
  4. monitor and check students’ learning and respond as appropriate.

8a

plan

assessorssay What assessors sometimes say:
The candidate's controlled-practice tasks did not sufficiently focus on the target skill.
The final freer practice stage did not require the learners to use the target items.
The second gap-fill exercise was not properly exploited in the feedback stage so some learners were still unsure whether they had it right.
The task for the practice stage did not require the learners to use the target subskill.

In your plan, you set out and named the stages of the lesson and the aims of each stage.
Look again at the procedures and their aims and ask yourself:

There are two guides on this site which are helpful in this area because you have to decide whether an activity or task is for awareness raising, for teaching (skill getting) or for practice (skill using).  The guides are to activity types and to task types.
During the lesson, therefore, ask yourself (silently) this question:


8b

exploit

assessorssay What assessors sometimes say:
The candidate had underestimated the amount of time required for the feedback / clarification stage.  Feedback was hurried and inadequate.
The controlled practice phase was cut too short so the learners were insufficiently prepared for the final two stages of the lesson.

Exploiting your plan is more than following it.

At the planning stage:

In the lesson:


8c

deliver

assessorssay What assessors sometimes say:
The lesson lacked a sense of direction with stages insufficiently identified and their targets made clear.
Pace was overly quick, allowing little time for the learners to reflect and make notes of key ideas.
The lesson was coherent but the lack of variation in activity types made it monotonous and did not allow the learners to take away a record of what they had learned.

This is mostly a planning issue.  Look at the stages of the lesson and make sure:

In the lesson:


8d

monitor, check and respond

assessorssay What assessors sometimes say:
At key stages in the lesson the candidate was too concerned with setting up the next activity and failed to monitor and support his learners.
The candidate did not check that the targets of the lesson were actually being used.
The candidate moved around the class during the group-work stages but failed to intervene when she should have done and sometimes interrupted learners unnecessarily.

At the planning stage, you need to make sure that there are times both during and at the end of the lesson to check what has been learned.
Make sure in the lesson:


The teaching criteria sections and preparing to teach:

Section 6 Section 7 Section 8 Section 9 Preparing to teach
relationships language procedures management visualising the lesson