Technique 6: Begin with the End

Chapter 2 begins with this great summary: If you want to be a great teacher, you have to plan, and plan diligently.

When planning a lesson (or, a semester of classes), begin by figuring out the objective of the lesson, not the activities in the lesson.  If you start out with an objective, then you can plan the activities to achieve that objective most efficiently.  And, you can daily measure how well you achieved your objective, and determine then if you are able to move on to the next objective in the course.

E.g., "What will my students understand today?" is an objective, whereas "What will my students do today?" is not.

Great lessons begin with planning, and specifically with effective unit planning: planning a sequence of objectives, one or possibly two for each lesson, over an extended period of time (say, six weeks).

Once you have you objective(s) planned, then you can do your lesson plan:

1. Review how well the previous objectives were mastered.

2. Plan a short daily assessment to determine how well today's objectives are understood.

3. Plan activities that will lead to student mastery of today's objectives (and, perhaps, mastery of previous objectives, if they weren't mastered).

The author points out that sometimes the best way to achieve an objective is to use a technique that isn't very "sexy" -- like presenting a lecture. The criteria to decide how to teach is not how cool the activity is, but how effectively it will work.

(Note: more about the daily assessment, in the next technique.)

My response:

I love it.  I didn't do that in CS106, but I'm going to do it when I plan CS106 for the fall.