Teaching applications: planning the sample lesson

As part of his teaching interview, secondary ICT teacher Ubaid Ansari was asked to deliver a 30 minute sample ICT lesson. Here, he explains how he prepared and handled this interview exercise under the vigilence of the head teacher and senior teacher from the school.

Plan well

‘I planned hard for my 30-minute sample lesson, and the biggest lesson I learned from that planning was to use the help of the other students on the PGCE course and the course tutors. I had several very useful sessions with students and tutors where we developed ideas, where I heard how another sample lesson had gone and where people gave feedback on my ideas. That was invaluable.’

• Find out as much as you can about the class before you start, allowing you to pre-empt any potential problems
• Keep the lesson brief and flexible; you will almost always need more time than you have

Keep it simple

‘The most important change I made to my lesson was to cut it down and make it simple. This made it more likely to succeed, and meant that I could handle the fact that the students turned out not to be as far ahead with the topic as I thought they would be.’

• Your main objective is to impart knowledge. State simply what you need to, and repeat it in different ways to make sure that those with different learning styles are catered for

Be practical

‘The next most important thing I did in the lesson was, during computer log-ons at the start, to hand out two sheets of sticky labels with marker pens, to stick a name label on my own chest, and to ask all students to label themselves. I thought this would go down well with the observer, and it did. But even more important, it helped me relate really well with the students. I saw them as individuals straight away, and it helped me settle into the lesson and enjoy it.’

• Sometimes little tricks can be the most effective part of a candidate’s performance. While the students might not pick up on this, the assessors will.

Ubaid Ansari is a secondary ICT teacher at Fitzharrys School in Abingdon. He has a degree in computing and information systems from the University of Manchester and continued his studies there with a PGCE, which he completed in 2006.