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Time Management in the Classroom
All homeschool teachers and traditional schoolteachers have difficulty packing into their school year everything they want their children to learn, and often we realize belatedly that we have left out some crucial aspects of our curriculum. How can we avoid these deficiencies and include all essential elements in each of our lessons? One word comes to mind--planning. The better you plan, the more you will teach. Time management requires careful planning. I would like to give you four principles to help you plan your courses effectively.
Principle #1 Write a yearly scope and sequence chart.
Give this document a lot of thought and write a realistic, detailed chart for each class you will teach during the coming year. Be realistic: consider what you can cover adequately in one year. To do this, review last year's chart and make any necessary adjustments. Keep in mind the difficulty of each course, the cognitive development of your children, and the time need for every item. Be detailed: divide the document into the topics to be taught throughout the year. For example, English should be divided into vocabulary, grammar, literature, expository and creative writing. Include all quizzes and tests, and supplementary resources--that is, artwork and music, excerpts from movies or videos, supplementary literature not in your basic textbooks. Refer to this document every week before writing lesson plans to ensure that you are covering all essential material.
Principle #2 Write weekly lesson plans
Plan the week's work and write realistic, detailed lesson plans for the each subject. Be realistic: consider what you can adequately cover each day and, again, consider the difficulty of each subject, your children's cognitive abilities, and the time factor. Be detailed: include page numbers and homework assignments. Refer to your lesson plans every day. Good planning allows you to make the best use of classroom time and reduces preparation time. Make every minute of your class time profitable.
Principle #3 Establish classroom procedures
During the first week of school, establish basic routines and review them with your children so that you do not have to say the same thing repeatedly. Here are some time-efficient procedures for your classroom: Insist that your children start school well prepared. If they start school without the necessary materials to hand, establish some academic penalty in order to train them to be responsible. Collect homework and distribute handouts efficiently. Instigate and maintain classroom procedures for these basic tasks and never vary your procedures. Do not repeat instructions. Your children will learn to listen to you the first time. Repetition eats up the seconds. Begin to lecture when you, not your children, are ready, and do not allow your children to interrupt you. C. S. Lewis began to lecture as he stalked down the corridor outside his lecture hall at Oxford University! Use the overhead projector, which is a great time saver because it allows you to prepare transparencies ahead of time and eliminates your stopping to write on the board. You can present a great deal of information on a transparency in a short period of time, and you can supervise your children more effectively by ensuring that you have their undivided attention. Establish routines for testing and rigorously maintain these procedures. Do not allow questions during testing. Questions increase the time needed for testing. Do not grade tests during class; instead, return graded tests, review problems, and re-teach concepts as necessary. This procedure is a good use of time.
Principle #4 Analyze your curriculum
If you regularly analyze your curriculum, you will be much better prepared to teach effectively and efficiently; you will anticipate difficulties and decide upon the best methodology for every lesson you teach. I am going to discuss the English curriculum, but most of the methods I suggest can be applied to other classes.
I. Vocabulary
Improving students' vocabulary is one of the most important goals of any teacher; nevertheless, you should plan to spend a minimum of class time studying word lists. Attempting to increase a child's vocabulary with a workbook is artificial and, in most cases, will not achieve the best results. The best way for a child to improve his vocabulary is to read good literature. If you wish to use a workbook, use this procedure: discuss each word, including its etymology and connotations, assign exercises for homework, and provide answers the next day. Students in elementary school and middle school enjoy making crossword puzzles using the week's vocabulary words. You distribute a grid and require them to make up challenging clues. They exchange and solve one another's crosswords.
II. Composition
Thoroughly teach essay skills. It wastes time if you assign a task that students cannot accomplish, so train your students to write well-structured, well-developed essays. This means that you distribute instructions for essay writing as well as annotated model essays. Train your students to take notes before they write. Their notes should be stapled to the back of each essay. This procedure reduces time spent writing in-class essays to perhaps thirty or forty minutes.
III. Literature
Require your children to read fiction for homework. It wastes time to read short stories or novels during class, although you can successfully interest your children in a long novel by reading them the opening chapters. Follow up your reading with scenes from a video before assigning a large junk of reading. After one week, discuss this section of the novel before assigning another long reading assignment. Review the plot elements of a novel or play by using Frietag's pyramid or fill-in-the-blank worksheets. Students always enjoy taped recordings of plays. Use Arkangel or Caedmon tapes for Shakespeare and other drama. When you study poetry, always read a poem to your children with as much expression as possible. I like to read poetry with the lights dimmed and to the accompaniment of classical music. Remember that students need to hear poetry well read in order to understand a poem because its sound conveys much of its meaning.
IV. Grammar
Teach grammar in conjunction with composition. Do not be a slave to workbooks. Rather than wading through a 350-page grammar workbook, use the workbook as a resource; assign only as many exercises as necessary to correct an individual student's errors. A good way to reinforce a rule you have taught is to write ungrammatical sentences on the board for your children to correct. Alternatively, you could ask the children to write an ungrammatical sentence, then exchange and correct one another's sentences. As a further variation, you could require students to compose sentences that illustrate a particular rule. You should continually point out that grammar is not an end in itself but a means to an end, good writing.
V. Book Reports
Students should read a novel or a collection of short stories every three or four weeks because reading increases their ability to write well. Include several biographies a year because biographies enhances their appreciation for other subjects such as history, science, and mathematics. Teach them how to write good books reports and vary the format. I suggest that you use The Book Tree as a resource for books that appeal to young people.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the better you plan, the more material you will cover and the more effective your teaching will be. Time is a resource given us by God, and we are accountable to Him for our use of the time He gives us to teach our children.
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