There is a way to teach a great lesson without preparation time.
But first, a caveat:
You must be an expert in your subject area. You can’t be an effective, compelling teacher if you don’t know your subject area well.
It’s our firm belief here at SCM that teacher ed. programs do an awful job preparing teachers for the reality of the classroom.
First and foremost is the lack of classroom management instruction and practice. A close second, is the disregard for content expertise.
While visiting classrooms, both are glaring weaknesses among many (many) teachers. The acceleration of student malaise and poor behavior since the pandemic has exposed this lack of training even more.
It’s the reason so many teachers are giving up. It’s why they’re complaining so vocally and assuming that there is nothing they can do about unmotivated and undisciplined students.
The reality is that they don’t have the skills. Forgive the digression, but it’s important to point out that having excellent classroom management and content mastery is a prerequisite for the strategy I’m going to share with you.
Given these, however, the way to teach lessons with little to no preparation is pretty awesome. In fact, with practice, you may find that the results are better than if you were to prepare for hours.
Here’s how it works:
Step #1 – Know what you want your students to know and/or be able to do.
There can never, ever be a question in your mind regarding your objective. It must be precise and clear in your head. No doubts or hesitations. “I want my students to be able to do X.”
Step #2 – Know how you want your students to prove they understand your objective.
You must have a way for them to demonstrate their knowledge of what you’ve taught them. It can be an essay, project, problem(s), presentation, diagram, map, etc., which they do independently.
Step #3 – Know how much time you have.
Managing the clock is an ability you must develop to be exacting and effective. Decide to the second how much time you have to teach and your students have to accomplish the task you give them.
Step #4 – Be 100% focused and dedicated to steps one through three.
You must be faithful to these three come hell or high water. Do not allow for any internal negotiation. No wavering or dovetails off this narrow focus. Know them and commit to them before the lesson.
Step #5 – With only your content knowledge, steps above, and your wits, teach the lesson.
Rely on pure improvisation to deliver the goods to your students. You’ll find that you’ll have greater wisdom and more compelling delivery than if you were to spend hours preparing.
Now, it’s important to point out that it’s not for everyone. It’s chess to checkers, and you get better and more confident the more you do it. But if you have the background knowledge and classroom management skills, you can do it for every lesson you teach.
Not only will you save yourself years of time and stress over the course of your career hunched over your desk, but you’ll be a great teacher. Your personality, creativity, and humor will shine—brighter than any lesson you’ve ever taught.
Your students will love learning from you, which will only make your classroom management that much stronger. They’ll make galloping progress, stacking successful understanding of objective after objective.
You’ll be able to up the ante on complexity and time spent working independently.
Best of all is that it’s a lot more fun to teach this way. If you think back to when you first decided to become a teacher, it’s what you pictured yourself doing.
Performing, mimicking, storytelling, dramatizing, regaling, emoting, captivating—all off the top of your head—while your students lean in, engrossed and lost in learning.
If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
Truly excellent article!
I love this so much! With all of the stress of unannounced observations looming over our heads, this simple formula is the ticket to high scores. Thank you for always delivering truth and common sense that supports teachers on their journey!
Hi Michael,
I loved this article and hope to one day be able to do what you just described.
My issue is achieving this when I am required to follow the curriculums my district purchased. I teach fifth grade and the literacy curriculum our district bought goes against many of the SCM principles of good instruction (it’s boring, each lesson involves multiple objectives that are glossed over instead of diving deep into one objective, etc.). I am not a fan of the curriculums for the other subjects that we must use either.
So what do you suggest for teachers who are bound by boring, ineffective curriculums? Thanks!
I think it’s important to know exactly what is expected of you. The curriculum that we have at our school has its good points and its not so good points just as every curriculum that’s out there. There are parts of the curriculum that I completely disagreed with. Some of those are like yours, 5 to 10 objectives in one lesson! I am always a rebel and I just started choosing the most important objective and ran with it. Not only did I notice that the students were way more engaged, but they began to understand the content much more. Pretty soon with all of the spiraling that was already occurring in the curriculum, they were able to meet all of the objectives at some point during the year, which is really what we’re wanting them to do anyway. I am also not a huge fan of the worksheets because again the worksheets had 10 objectives for each paper and only one or two that were related to the lesson of that day! I did get permission but I threw out those worksheets and made my own so that I was no longer teaching to a worksheet, but the worksheets were solely a way of showing that they could meet that objective independently. Making the worksheets was a lot of work but it’s definitely paying off now.
Love this and it is where I am now. I am having the best year ever. However, it is piggy backed on 5 years of teaching the same subject, prepared and well constructed lessons that were labored over and refined yearly, and experienced discipline practice (thanks to SCM!). I love my content and love teaching it to others! We
I wish I could have had you as a teacher!
Hi Michael,
This improvisational way of teaching certainly sounds right up my alley, though with so much ed tech content pervading classrooms today, would this teaching approach be able to work in concert with it, or do you see ed tech be more of a hindrance in this particular approach?
I think with lots of practice it could, although with tech I’d think there would have to be some prep beforehand
~another pertinent article- thanks Michael. Many (many) years ago, I used this book, and it helped improve my teaching.
Acting Lessons for Teachers: Using Performance Skills in the Classroom 2nd Edition by Robert T. Tauber
In addition to engaging students, the teacher will enjoy their lessons as well 🙂
Thank you for the book recommendation, it looks like a good one!
Michael, I am not currently teaching but still find inspiration in how to raise my children. For example, one solution about routines was that they were taking too long. I found this to be the case with my kids with several of our daily routines- like clearing the table after dinner. Thank you.
A person once asked me If being a parent helps with teaching. I said yes and also teaching helps me be with parenting too
Great article as always!
Thanks for the continued truth you share about how poorly teachers training is. Then we are presented with almost impossible expectations in the classroom.
Much appreciated!!!
Instead of having these instructors, who have not been in the classroom for many years, train teachers. They should have teachers who have been in the classroom during the school year put together training programs for incoming teachers, how-to’s and realities
Go to your standards and understand them. Go see what Saul Kahn does – he has a genius for distilling concepts to simple illustrations. Go to Wikipedia and a reference article or two. Read stuff generally in your life. Loving “ How to not be wrong, the power of mathematical thinking”. Pull an illustration that connects objective to simple explanation. Go time. I also like to use Perusall so students are reading something for the first 12 minutes. Go time.
Michael, I just finished reading your new book, Inspire. It may be about how to inspire children, but I found that it inspired me! Absolutely fantastic!
Thanks Rowan! So glad to hear it.
I use this method daily. My lessons are planned for the classes I teach by contracted teacher. It has worked really well. I am a substitute teacher.
I spend so much time creating and posting my lessons for the next week to our school’s website. I have to have each activity posted and that is what takes the longest to plan.