Great lessons have key characteristics. Many edu-bloggers have discussed this but for me, the one that nails it is Tom Sherrington where he discusses the topic in some detail in his ‘Great Lessons‘ series on his brilliant blog.
He breaks these down in to ten key areas:
Probing (questioning) Rigour (pitch and tone of a lesson) Challenge (which also talks about flow – setting the right pitch of challenge) Differentiation Journeys (the learning journey) Explaining (the importance of educators being able to explain concepts well) Agility (planning but also being able to respond to learners in a lesson – the agile teacher) Awe (the ability of an educator to instil awe and its counterpart, wonder, within a lesson) Possibilities (allowing and facilitating blue-sky thinking in our learning and opportunities) Joy (enabling the transmission of joy for our subject, our learning and knowledge and instilling it for learners and colleagues alike)