Do you ever find yourself too short on time to adequately prepare for your learning sessions you run?
I know how you feel!
Throughout my teaching career, Sundays were often a day of anxiety.
That’s the day I would prepare for my week of teaching.
For the classes I ran, I knew the content we’d be exploring, but I often felt challenged coming up with successful strategies to ignite, inspire and unleash learning for everyone.
And as you know nothing is worse than standing in front of a group of people unprepared or unsure that what
you’ve developed will work.
Over the years I learned to end the anxiety of Sundays by relying on rituals, strategies, systems and procedure that I knew would unleash learning.
So whether you run a meeting, staff development workshop or teach at a school or university, here’s a quick strategy you can use to save yourself time and confidently ensure learning is unleashed for everyone
Have partners read to each other.
Here’s how it works:
1. Create a seating plan prior to the session so that everyone has an assigned seat and an assigned partner to work with. When creating partners, think about second language learners’ needs, people who might support each other well, or learners who might need assistance with reading.
2. At the start of the session assign partners (ideally they will be sitting next to each other).
3. Once the session begins, have partners decide who is partner A and who is partner B.
4. During the session, rather than read out loud to the group (instructions, PowerPoint slides, pieces of text, etc.) have partners read the material to each other.
5. If the text is long or if there are numerous instructions, have partners go back and forth with the reading – Partner A reads the first paragraph then partner B the next paragraph out loud, etc.
Remember, to unleash learning, it’s all about lifting the weights. Reading to a partner is a great way to confidently make that happen.
