How to teach when your plan doesn’t work?

Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam (Klingon)

or

no plan survives contact with the enemy (Moltke)

No matter how well you prepare, things will go wrong. Especially at the beginning. Students may not respond well to a certain exercise, things take much longer than expected, or you may run out of material. This is completely normal. You just need to be aware of the moment when you abandon your original plan. It is good to have something prepared as a reserve that you can throw in. With some experience and a little luck, there is a good chance that students won’t even notice that you trashed your original plan and started doing something else. Here are a few typical situations and what you can do:

You are running out of time

• Skip some of your content, but reserve time for a proper wrap-up.
• Repeat with the ‘Check & Cross’ technique.
• Give a brief oral Summary of the lesson.
• Take notes in your lesson plan where you lost time.

You have too much time left

• Repeat: Organize a quiz with a few prepared questions (single words work as cues for a quiz).
• Repeat: Go through your most important slides/diagrams again, but have students summarize the essentials.
• Prepare a single example that you can explain in detail.
• Show websites relevant to the subject.
• Ask students for feedback: write some topics that you have planned for, and have a poll how important they are for the students. You can also use the ‘2D-plot’ technique.

You are teaching in a computer room

When working with computers and things go wrong, they often go totally wrong. Some suggestions to avoid the worst catastrophes:

• Test installation of everything in advance.
• Bring all material on two USB drives.
• Keep material on the web.
• Know what to do if there is no internet.
• Know what to do if there is no projector.
• Be ready to improvise.

Your original plan does not work at all

• Have a 15-minute presentation prepared that highlights a detailed example from current research relevant to the subject.
• Have a written exercise for calculating or formulating some text ready. This may be a second example to something you had already. If its a difficult matter, students will appreciate the opportunity to rehearse it.
• Keep sample exam questions ready. They are useful in many situations.

With some experience and a little luck, there is a good chance that students won’t even notice that you trashed your original plan and started doing something else.