3.0.

BEING PREPARED & ORGANISED

3.1. Be prepared
From the minute your class begins to the minute it ends, there should be no reason
for you to leave the classroom. This means you must be prepared – there should
be no dashing off to the photocopier because you don’t have enough copies, or
your board markers have run out of ink.

If something unexpected crops up (eg, the plug on your CD recorder explodes, or

the lights in the classroom stop working), see if you can ask one of your students to
leave the room for you to take the message to Admin or Maintenance, rather than
going yourself. If you absolutely have to leave the classroom for any reason, make
sure your students are working on a task before you do so.

The more prepared you are with your planning, the more smoothly the class will
run. As a new teacher, you should “over-plan”. Try to anticipate possible problems
with your lesson, and have solutions ready in place.

You should check beforehand that all electrical equipment you will need for your
class is working, and ALWAYS have a backup plan. For example, if you plan to
watch a video with your class, or use the internet – what will you do if there is a
power failure, or the internet crashes? Another example of things going wrong
could be that a few students finish an activity in half the time you have allowed for
it. You should have an extra activity up your sleeve that you can give your “fast”
students to work on, while the others are finishing.

Try to keep all your students engaged at all times: allowing some students to sit
and chat while the rest of the class is working is distracting, and could lead to
problem behaviour such as wandering around the class, talking on mobile phones
etc.

The advantage of being prepared is that it allows you time to think during the class,
and to assess the “mood” of the whole class and/or individual students, so that you
can head off potential problems before they become problems. If you are too busy
improvising or thinking on your feet, your class will have a hectic feel to it which will
communicate itself to your students. The more organised you are, the more your
students will be able to relax, knowing that they are in capable hands. Strive
always to be calm and in control.