🏫 How to prepare lessons or activities for children?

In general: 12 wise lessons (Surma et al., 2019)

When you prepare lessons in Flanders, you always try to work towards the goals described by the school and by yourself. In addition, you try to make your lesson attractive by taking into account the next building blocks:

Activate prior knowledge.
Give a clear, structured instruction and set clear but challenging goals in a motivating learning environment by
preparing your lessons profoundly.
Give examples and demonstrate skills.
Combine word and image, work visually.
Let the content be actively processed, forget lecturing alone!
Track if everybody understood the content.
Provide support in difficult tasks e.g. scaffolding.
Use time wisely e.g. by working gradually over several weeks.
Provide variety in exercises.
Use evaluation as a learning strategy e.g. integrate quizes as retrieval practice.
Provide feedback that make children think, do not give solutions.
Let children learn effectively, learn them how to learn e.g. learning strategies.

Lesson subjects

In the table below, you find possible lesson subjects and guidelines for a lesson plan.

Work gradually towards your goal: orientation -> instruction -> exercise -> conclusion.

Music	Learn the children a song in your mother language, in English, in another language you can speak, ...	Oriëntation/Introduction: start listening to a full song (e.g. from your country) and give children a listening instruction (e.g. “how many times you hear the word …?”), ritmic instruction (e.g. clap in rhythm), drawing instruction (e.g. draw the pitch),… Instructions: learn the children (parts of) the song: important words, meaning of the words, function of the song, chorus, verse, two-voices,… Provide a songtext (work visually!) Exercise: Sing the song multiple times in different ways, invent or add movements to the song, add instruments, make a rap of a part of the song, make a videoclip Koppelingen naar een externe site.,… Conclusion: Repeat the content (pitch, rhythm, function)
Art	Learn the children about a famous artist of your country and make art with the children inspired by that artist.	Oriëntation/Introduction: start from a (famous) art piece (show a picture) (e.g. from your country) and consider with the children some elements (shape, color, lines, light, space, texture, composition) that are peculiar to the piece by asking questions Instructions: experiment with a specific technique or with specific elements of the art piece. Set some criteria. Exercise: make an art piece based on the discussed techniques or elements (criteria). Conclusion: presentation of the art pieces and discuss both process and product, clean the classroom if necessary
Social Environmental and Scientific Education (SESE)	Learn the children about the cultural, social, geographical aspects of your country or region. Learn the children some cooking recipes that are typical in your country. Learn the children about technique, manual classes, ...	Cooking: Oriëntation: tell a story about food (in your country), let the children guess the ingrediënts Instruction: learn the children the meaning of the ingredients, give instructions about measurements and accuracy, demonstrate difficult steps of the recipe (how to use a scale,…) Exercise: the children follow the recipe and cook Provide a step by step instruction (roadmap), work visually! Conclusion: Taste + evaluate the process and product
Physical Education	Learn the children typical games and sports of your country. Learn the children some typical dance routines of your country.	Oriëntation: play a simple body warm up game / play some music and children freely interpret, run/dance within an area Instruction: learn the children some techniques of a typical sport of learn them a game (from your country) / learn the children the different steps of the dance routine (from your country) (Exercise: do variations on the game or dance) Conclusion: end the lesson with a quiet, calm game or activity / play a queit song and do some breathing exercises to unwind Advice: wear yourself a sporty outfit (or change clothes as well)
Mathematics	Learn the children about operations, fractions, ...	Orientation: Repeat the content they already know to make sure you enter their zone of proximal development (Vygotsky). Instruction: give instruction about the exercises that will follow. Use the blackboard! Exercise: make exercises on a sheet or play a game with the new learned content (domino with exercises,…)… Conclusion: evaluate how the exercises/games went: Was is fun? Was it hard? ...
Language	Learn the children about your language or another foreign language (other than Dutch).	Orientation: listen to the words or sentences carefully in a song, in a story Instruction: compare the words with other words they already know, translate by using pictures/icons, exercise on pronounciation (repeat in parts) Exercise: play a game with the new learned words (bingo,…), apply in a song,… Conclusion: words quiz

💡 Inspiration

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