Teaching for amateurs

A bit more depth about the way people learn and good techniques.
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Introduction

This is a companion to Three Essential Teaching Techniques. Here we immediately see what goes wrong with a lot of teaching (it's lecturing) then discuss a bit about how people learn, then rattle through practical techniques.

Anyone who 'takes classes' should check this out because it

  • shows the reason why some teachers are better than others
  • covers practical classroom and coaching matters
Layman's language and practical try-yourself examples are used throughout.

Details

This article is in two main sections:
Theory
  • The difference between merely lecturing and teaching.
  • The need to have excellent student to teacher communications
  • Being aware of what makes things easy to learn
  • Things easily learnt are easily recalled
  • The importance of continious revision
  • 'Nothing is obvious' - The need for really small steps.
  • Distingusihing between what is learnt and how it is learnt
Practice
The sort of thing you are impressed by when you watch a really good teacher rattling through a subject with enthusiastic, competent and fizzing students. This can be used as a checklist to assess your own classroom performance.
Either you know all this already, in which case this might be a good way to take a self-assessment check of your technique; or this is new, in which case you're about to see some magic.
CommentsPossibilities
  1. To be really good only takes months, it's just experience that makes you efficient. To be five times better than a lecturer takes a day or less. If you know your subject then this article shows you how to light the 'blue touch paper' of teaching.
  1. Let me know how you get on.
Contact details are in the article