When you are planning a lesson or activity, think about the organization of your ideas as well as your time. The nitty-gritty basics are:
1. Focus. Introduce the lesson/activity by creating a straight-forward 1-3 sentences. This overview lets the students “in on” your plan. It also forces you to clarify your goals, thus weeding out unnecessary details that can be introduced as needed.
2. Set your expectations. Make the goals of the lesson/activity clear. Again be concise. If you are a good word Scrooge, you can fit it into your introduction. Again, it provides the students with direction.
3. Work Time.Demonstrate the parts of the lesson/activity and fill in needed details. Allow time for questions before and during the work time. If some questions arise over and over, stop the students, explain the answer(s) and then send them back to work.
Use the work time as a chance to wander among the students, supervise, make adjustments and compliment examples of the various parts of the task. Remember to compliment the work rather than judge the student.
4. Closure, Clean-up and Closure. After your 5-minute reminder of the end of the worktime, begin the clean-up. Guide rather than do the clean-up yourself. Set a time limit and a quiet voice level as the students calmly put their supplies and materials away. Save 2-4 minutes at the end to have a discussion of what went well, what changes students may have made if they had more time, etc. This ending closure slows down the work time and the students and prepared them for…
5. Dismissal.
For more details on these 5 parts of a lesson, read through various chapters of my book. If you are in a hurry, use this abbreviated list of 5.