Understanding that we need to address all the students in the class.

Are we addressing all the students in the class?

Sometimes without being aware of it ourselves we are making the difference between students greater by favouring some students and ignoring others. Consider the questions below to reflect upon your own teaching and consider whether you are directing your lesson to all the students in the class:
  • Can all the students see you?
  • Can you see all the students?
  • Can all the students hear you?
  • Do you know all the students’ names?
  • Do the weaker students sit at the back, where it’s more difficult for you to make eye contact with them?
  • Do you ask questions to the class and give everyone time to respond or do you let the quick students call out the answers first, so that’s it’s always the same students who do the answering?
  • Are you fair?
  • Do you encourage all the students?
  • Are you patient?
  • Are your instructions clear?
  • Is your lesson well signposted? (i.e. do students know what they should be doing at any given time? Do you give time limits for activities? Has everyone noticed that you want to give some new instructions or explain something?)
  • Are all the students comfortable? (If a student is too hot, in pain, hungry, upset, preoccupied etc they are not in the right condition to learn.)

 

Topics

Teenagers: Teaching mixed-ability teens