Things to Have Ready When Teaching a Class
Organization is one of the most important keys to being an effective teacher. An unorganized teacher will waste valuable class time looking for materials, which in turn will cause both her and her students to become distracted from the lesson at hand. Make sure you have everything ready to go before you begin to teach your class, and you will find that the lesson will progress much more smoothly.
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Lesson Plan
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Your lesson plan is the blueprint for your teaching success. It contains not only your teaching goals, but the assessments you will do to check for understanding. Most importantly, consulting your lesson plan while you are teaching will help you stay on track and not veer off into tangents or waste time discussing topics that are not on task.
Teacher's Guide
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The teacher's guide (teacher's version of a textbook) should be placed next to your lesson plan. It contains details about the day's lesson, along with helpful tips and examples that you can share with the students as you teach.
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Manipulatives
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Manipulatives are those items that the students will use to better understand the lesson. This could include materials for a science experiment, calculators for a math lesson or even a set of watercolors for each student to use after an art lesson. Make sure you have enough manipulatives for each student, pair of students or group to use.
Tools
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Tools should be kept nearby and ready to go in the likely event that you will need to use them. Always have fresh dry-erase markers and erasers handy, as well as pens or pencils or even chalk if your classroom still has a chalkboard. Keep a supply of paper handy for those students who run out, and if you use overheads, make sure you have plenty of transparencies. If you are using a smartboard or other educational technology, the definition of tools can be extended to include pointers, extension cords and even spare light bulbs for an overhead projector.
Supplemental Materials
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Most lessons end with an independent practice session when the students have to prove that they have understood the lesson. Often, this means completing a worksheet. Have a class set of worksheets copied and ready to hand out. Other supplemental materials might include books for extended reading assignments.
Helpful Items
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There are other items teachers often find helpful to have ready when teaching a class. These include an updated class list and seating chart, a list with the addresses and phone numbers of the students, a copy of the classroom rules and guidelines, a syllabus that summarizes the learning goals for the term and of course, for younger children, some kind of small reward for hard work, such as stickers. If you think you might be doing some participation grading as you teach, have your gradebook ready as well.
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