D - Lesson implementation

Summary

The way that the teacher's planning decisions are realized in-flight will require the capacity to adapt the plan in line with the actual classroom circumstances, as these evolve in time and space: no lesson plan, however carefully elaborated, can fully anticipate how the learners will respond to it. The teacher, therefore, needs the skills whereby the lesson can be managed so as to maximize learning opportunities, even in the face of the unpredictable.

• 48 Adaptive expertise

• 49 The physical space

• 50 The online space

• 51 Classroom management and instructions

• 52 Classroom interaction: the teacher

• 53 Classroom interaction: pair and group work

• 54 Challenge/push/pace/flow

• 55 Openings, closings and transitions

• 56 Using presentation software

• 57 Providing feedback

• 58 Dealing with emergent language

Adaptive expertise

How does the planned lesson evolve into the performed lesson? How are the pre-flight decisions realized in-flight? That's where adaptive expertise comes in: the capacity to redesign the lesson in real operating conditions.

We have seen already that even the most meticulously planned lessons don't always go to plan (see 11). Here is an example, taken from an actual classroom in Mexico (from Cadorath and Harris, 1998, p. 188):

[After taking the register the teacher starts chatting to students]

T: well then, Jorge … did you have a good weekend?

S: yes

T: what did you do?

S: I got married.

T: [smiling] you got married. (0.7) you certainly had a good weekend then. (5.0) [laughter and buzz of conversation]

T: now turn to page 56 in your books. (1.6) you remember last time we were talking about biographies … [T checks book and lesson plan while other students talk to Jorge in Spanish about his nuptials.]

Here, despite the unexpected contribution of one student, and the interest it aroused on the part of the other students, the teacher made the decision to stick to her plan. She may have had very good reasons to do this. Nevertheless, you can't help feeling that there was an opportunity lost here, and that the teacher's decision to go with the plan was in fact a lack of decision. She could, for example, have decided to get the other students to ask Jorge, in English, about his wedding, with a view to their writing it up as a news story.