Your Class as a Training Session

          Have you every been to a professional development session where the presenter talked at you and read the slides word for word the entire time? Where there was no engagement or practice of concepts and the room was too crowded to maintain your focus? Where you counted down the slow moving minutes in anticipation of the lunch break? I have. 

            Imagine if that was how your classroom was run. How do you think students would feel about learning or staying interested in what you have to say? They wouldn't enjoy it anymore than you do in PD sessions that go like that. 

             It is important to think of every class as a new training session. Show your passion for what you are teaching and make sure to facilitate student centered lessons. Think about a PD session you attended that got you excited about what you learned and aim to recreate that for your students. 

             Start each lesson with an engaging warm up that gets them (students) wondering what the class will be about. Have a think-pair-share time to review the warm-up. Each pair should come up with 2-3 questions about what the content might cover that day. Then, they can change partners and share 1 of their questions or inferences on what the class will be about that day. 

              After that there should be a review of the agenda and objective for the day. Begin the explicit teach portion with reading a relevant text or video that continues getting students to think about the topic and purpose of the lesson. When you finally get to slides, remember that explicit teach shouldn't take more than 15 or so minutes - kids just don't have the attention span for much longer. Try not to read what is on the slides to them. Trust that you know the content and teach authentically. One way to avoid reading the slides is to only put bullet points, not whole sentences. 

               Once the explicit teach portion is finished, provide students with different opportunities to interact with what they have just learned. Stations, digital breakouts, Kahoot!, and card sorts are a few ideas to engage students in practice with concepts and content. 

                In the end, students should finish with a ticket out that gives them an opportunity to express what they understood, wondered about, or took away from the day's lesson.

                 Just remember the worst and best training you ever attended, and decide how you can recreate the things that worked for you as an audience member.