This month’s “teaching tip” will also deal with the concept of Review. Teachers, both home and school, often can get so wrapped up in the “who” and the “what” they must teach, that they forget to think about both how to begin and end a class.

Below is a simple method that will allow you to maintain continuity within the theme of what you are teaching whether Math, Science, History or even Sports instruction. Equally, it will keep your students moving in the right direction while allowing them to warm up their brains and recall what they had learned in the previous lesson, whether the day before or at the end of a class period the previous week.

Begin every class with a slight review – no more than 5 minutes if it is for a previous day’s class, or 10 minutes if it was the last class before a holiday and much time has passed since the pre-holiday class and the current post-holiday class. Remember: this is to warm up both student and teacher and to help both find their flow and get back into the subject after some time off.

Again, this allows both you and the students to warm up your brains and re-engage the topic. From there, you begin in a clear, concise fashion to introduce the new topic of the day to be taught. In other words, the ‘new’ should flow from and out of the ‘old.’

When you are nearing the end of the ‘new’ lesson, determine a good place to stop for the day and end with a very brief review of today’s class lesson then give the assignment to prepare the students for tomorrow.

Tomorrow you will once again review what was covered the previous day (i.e. today) so that you keep the flow of information coherent and connected in the minds of your students and yourself!

Happy Teaching!