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Question:

I need some advice on how to pace each daily lesson.

(Last edited: Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 4:12 PM)
Answer:

(This comes from my original post here: https://embarc.online/mod/page/view.php?id=3070)


Pacing is a common first-year concern. Here are some quick tidbits...
  1. Don't do ALL the fluency activities listed in the lesson. Only choose one, perhaps two of them. Perhaps, consider doing NONE of the fluency activities for that day.
  2. Do not turn the Application problem into a teachable moment. It is a time for the students to practice using their brain. It is a time for the teacher to collect formative data about the progress of her students. It should NOT turn into a 20 minute mini-lesson on how to solve the problem correctly.
  3. Be efficient with the Concept Development. Aim for 20 minutes maximum. To be efficient, the teacher needs to have decided the night before exactly the sequence of example problems to do for the lesson. Don't do ALL the examples in class. 
  4. Limit the time students do the "independent" practice (the Problem Sets) to ONLY 10 or 15 minutes! This means the Problem Set is a time-based event rather than a product-based event. Students are not expected to do ALL problems during the 10-15 minutes. 
  5. The night before, the teacher should decide which problems in the Problem Set are "must do's", "could do's", and "extensions". While students are working on the Problem Set in class for 10-15 minutes, they should do the "Must Do" problems first. Then the "Could Do" problems. 
  6. Save at least 5 or 10 minutes for the Student Debrief time. The teacher should pick one or two key debrief questions to ask the class. The teacher edition lists some questions the teacher might ask. Or the teacher can simply ask, "Would someone please explain their thinking for Question 4?"
All of the above can easily be fit into a 45 minute time period.