Delivery of the Lesson

A. Motivating Introduction

The first stage of any lesson, probably the most vital, is how to create interest and grab the learners' attention. A good introduction is a foretaste of the way the whole lesson will run. It can begin in an interesting question, a thrilling story, or one can even do something dramatic or interesting that will not only catch the learners' attention but will also provoke them and challenge their involvement in it. The learning objectives must be expressed very clearly, with learners informed of what they can achieve and how they are connected to the content of learning associated with the lesson.

For instance, let's say you are introducing learners to the understanding of the water life cycle. You might do something similar by beginning your talk with an opener like this: "Have you ever wondered what makes the water in oceans turn into clouds, and then from the clouds, fall back to us in the form of rain?" As a further example, you might use a flashlight, so that you have a container of water looking as if the sun is shining on it. This very simple demonstration immediately reaches the students, making them become curious about the process you are about to explain.

You could then facilitate a short discussion with the students on what they feel about the question. You might say it, as clear as day: "Today we are going to look at the water cycle: how water gets from the Earth's surface into the atmosphere and back down to the ground. This is an important process to life on Earth as it distributes this most basic of resources all over the globe, hence making a great difference in weather patterns and keeping fresh water supplies renewed." This introduction will interest and make the students part of the lesson, and it will also establish the purpose and importance of the lesson, a good anchor for the rest to follow.

B. Varied Approaches to Instruction

Effective teaching demands a flexible pedagogy that would suit the various needs of each and every student. Central to this is the practice of differentiated instruction. In this practice, teaching is personalized to work with students just where they are in their learning processes. Three potent ways to apply this principle:

1. Tiered Activities: These are activities of different degrees of challenge within the same lesson, so that different students can work at an appropriate, but roughly equivalent, level of difficulty. For example, if you teach persuasive writing, you could create several different versions of the same activity geared towards different skill levels, eg:

• Low Level: Give them a simpler prompt such as "Why is an important part of any school to have a library?" and provide scaffolding to help them organize their essays including sentence starters such as "One reason is …", "Another reason is … ", "In conclusion … ".


• Intermediate Level: Provide a more challenging topic, like "Should school uniforms be required?" and a more detailed structure for the essay, like an introduction with a thesis, body paragraphs with topic and supporting sentences, a counterargument, a rebuttal, and a conclusion. Encourage transitional phrases to provide smooth flows of ideas.


• Advanced Level: Provide a challenging prompt, such as, "Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of social media on teenagers," and then let them create a substantive outline that includes a well-developed thesis statement, effective arguments with supporting evidence, counterarguments with rebuttals, and a high-level conclusion. Enjoin them to include rhetorical devices and a variety of sentence structures.

Through these tiered activities, students can access tasks that are both challenging and accessible and therefore ensure that all learners are properly supported and stretched.

2. Choice Boards: These are menus of activity options from which learners get to choose the task they wish to do based on choices and learning style. For instance, in a lesson over ecosystems, you might include the following choices:

• Graphic Representation: To design a poster to illustrate an ecosystem, its inclusions, and interactions.


• Story Writing: Write a story about an animal according to the story that may exist in an ecosystem and daily interactions.


• Model Making: To make a 3D model of an ecosystem including plants, animals, and things happening around them.


• Research and Presentation: Research in-depth an ecosystem, whether rainforest or desert, and give an in-class presentation.


• Interactive Digital Project: Design a digital slideshow or video defining and describing the components of an ecosystem and what they do.

The diversity of these options allows for the visual, written, hands-on, research, and digital concerns of learning to be accommodated and for most students to land on their best way of engaging with the material.

3. Learning Stations: Diverse stations around the class in which learners engage in activities or use materials on the subject matter covered in the lesson. For example, in a vocabulary lesson in a foreign language class, you could have the following:

• Flashcards Station: Pupils, in pairs or small groups, test one another on the vocabulary words from the flashcards.


• Tech Station: Using tablets or computers, learners access language-learning apps and online games to play and create interactive activities for practicing new vocabulary.


• Writing Station: Give prompts which include some of the new vocabulary words and let students write a small story or description or maybe even a dialogue.


• Role-Playing Station: Imaginary scenes in which the student was prompted to use new vocabulary, such as asking for directions, ordering food, etc., in a restaurant.

Students move around these stations with a fixed amount of time that would have been carried out executing each task. This process ensures multiple exposures in different contexts, thereby understanding and retention get promoted.

Embedded in these strategies is not only access to learning by all students, whatever their abilities, but also a lively and inclusive classroom atmosphere.

C. Active Learning

Deep understanding requires active learning. This involves the process of engaging students through group work, discussions, hands-on activities, and peer teaching. The following is an example of active learning implemented by a teacher in an English class focused on narrative writing:

• Team Work: In this methodology, students are assigned a different short story and divided into small groups for reading. They come to understand the plot, characters, setting, conflict, and resolution within the story. Thereafter, they present a storyboard of analyzed elements. In this aspect, each group makes presentations of their storyboards to the class sharing the analyses. The teacher subsequently coordinates a discussion, asking students to share how the stories are similar or different and further asking some probing questions to raise understanding.


• In-Class Activities: Students are engaged in a creative task of eliciting from given prompts and tools, including picture cards and random word generators, their own Story Elements. The students can create a short scene or character description and then present them to partners on whom to provide feedback and suggestions.


• Peer Teaching: works in pairs so that each can teach the other something specific about good narrative writing, e.g., how to build suspense or motivation within the story. Each pair then develops a mini-lesson in that area, complete with examples and practice opportunities. They then teach each other and reverse roles—so that everyone is both the teacher and the learner.

The combination of group work, discussion, and experiential learning coupled with peer teaching ensures that students are active with respect to the material, working together to explore the narrative elements and practice their writing skills in a supportive interactive environment.

Thereof, assessment is essential. Teachers capture snapshots of student understanding through formative assessment, such as quizzes, polls, exit tickets, and informal checks, which guide the teacher's future instruction. For example, after having taught a unit about Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," a teacher might then want to prepare a short quiz for a comprehension check about major themes and characters. Questions could include:

1. Who is Romeo's best friend?


2. What is the subject of the Prologue


3. What happens first that sets off the underlying feud?


4. What kind of speech is Romeo's first speech?


5. What is the subject of 'piteous' as used in this Prologue?

Exit tickets can also be used by the teacher, where he gives students a paragraph on the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, foreshadowing from Act 1, and what they found most interesting or puzzling about the lesson.

It gives the teacher a feel of student problem areas through review of the quizzes and exit tickets so that he/she can adjust teaching accordingly. For example, if many of them missed identification of literary devices or themes, perhaps the teacher would like to revisit more examples with this and do further group discussions. He might even pair stronger students with those who need more support for peer teaching.

These formative assessments help a teacher track student outcomes, provide feedback, and modify teaching strategies accordingly to optimize learning results.

D. Scaffolding

Scaffolding is an important strategy of teaching in which complex activities are broken down to simple, small, and manageable steps so that learning finally reaches the desired goal step by step with the support system. Here follows a description of how scaffolding may be practiced in an English classroom wherein the students are being guided to write a persuasive essay:

• Modeling: Begin by presenting an accurately written persuasive essay to the students and breaking down the structure for them: in essence, there is an introduction, a thesis, a body with arguments and supported by evidence, counterarguments, and then a conclusion.


• Graphic Organizers: The students will be provided graphic organizers designed for planning an essay. It helps them to write a thesis statement, major arguments, supports or evidence, counterarguments, and a conclusion.


• Guided Practice: Students are to practice brainstorming topics and then practice using the graphic organizer in conjunction with a corresponding partner as the teacher circulates the room giving guidance/feedback.


• Sentence Starters and Examples: Really taking it a step further for the students, the teacher provides them with sentence starters and examples for writing their essay. For instance, they would like to see the use of "One reason why [thesis] is because…" in the body paragraphs and "Some people believe [counterargument], but…" in writing a counterargument.


• Peer Review: After they write their first draft, they exchange essays and review each other's work. Provided with a checklist by the teacher, they give constructive responses.


• Independent Practice: The class finalizes the revision of the essays made by the peers and further suggestions by the teacher. Thereafter, the class starts to write the final draft.

This scaffolding process supports the construction of students' confidence and competence in writing persuasive essays. For the teacher, through breaking down the task into manageable steps and providing ongoing support, he/she ensures that students are equipped with the necessary skills to succeed.

In other words, combining startling introductions, differentiated instruction, dramatic active learning strategies, and scaffolding will be powerful in getting those lessons across. This thereby creates a motivating lesson for the students — one which incorporates other ways of gaining understanding and, through bookends, establishes a trajectory of increasing student accomplishments.

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Arup Roy