A Checklist For New Teachers on How to Make Successful Interactive Decisions During a Lesson

Teacher-learning contexts change and teachers'pulling in different directionsstudents are bored,
behavior must change accordingly. The basic problemrestlessto accommodate student feedback due to
for teachers, is, therefore, to acknowledge that there isdiscipline problems and requests
no one best way to behave, and then to learn toEvaluative questions to be asked after the lesson:
make decisions in such ways that their behaviors areWas the lesson successful? Why or why not?
continually appropriate to the dynamic, moment toDid the students learn what I wanted them to learn?
moment complexity of the classroom. (Parker, 1984)Were all the students involved in the lesson?
The ability to make appropriate interactive decisions isDid I do sufficient preparation for the lesson?
clearly an essential teaching skills, since interactiveDo I need to reteach any aspect of the lesson?
decisions enable teachers to assess students;What would be a suitable follow-up to the lesson?
responses to teaching and to modify teachers'Example: if the lesson was around the topic of
instruction in order to provide optimal support foradvertisements, perhaps a suitable follow-up could be
learning. A teacher whose teaching is guided solely bycutting out advertisements from newspapers.
a lesson plan and who ignores the interactionalWill I teach the material in the same way next time?
dynamics of the teaching-learning process is unlikely toIn making interactive decisions, it is necessary to know
respond to the students' needs.the class, their weaknesses and strengths and to have
When do we need to make interactivefull control before expecting students to engage in the
decisions?timing problemssomething isn't "working"brightactivities from a teacher's lesson plan.
new ideas popping uplesson progression seems to be