Hi BADIs members, this is my fourth instalment on the 17 sub competences of a standards check.

Today I am going to talk about,” Was the lesson plan adapted, when appropriate, to help the pupil work towards their learning goals?”, under the title of lesson planning.
This is the most important sub competences of all the 17, which is your ability to change or adapt any aspect of the lesson, so your pupil learns.

The following are some examples of then a driving lesson needs to be adapted.

1/ Your pupil is finding the goal set to be too hard, consider either setting a goal that is easier to achieve, or offering more help to achieve their goal like increasing the level of instruction, making the route easier, changing the learning strategy (you need to know how your pupil learns best, more on this in later weeks).

2/ Your pupil is finding the goal set to be too easy, consider setting a goal that is more challenging, or offer less help to achieve their goal like decreasing the level of instruction or making the route more difficult.

3/ A safety critical situation as occurred during the lesson, where you had to intervene. Remember to park up and explain.

4/ Your pupil’s claims don’t match their performance. An example of this would be, your pupil says,” I am good at x,y&z”, where in reality they are very poor at x,y &z and keep making the same basic mistakes, would require a change in the lesson objectives. Don’t ignore the mistakes you pupil makes and think, I will deal with them later. Two reasons why not to do this are if you let your pupil keep making mistakes, they become habit and will be harder to break later (like drying cement) and secondly you are not offering value for money.

Finally, don’t adapt the lesson for an invalid reason, like a very mirror error that could easily be dealt with by using verbal intervention, next time it occurs. Also always explain to your pupil why the plan needs changing as well, so they understand what is happening and why.

Remember the sub competence of,” Was the lesson plan adapted when appropriate, to help the pupil work towards their learning goals?  is linked to other sub competencies on the standards check sheet. For example, if you are not aware of your pupils’ surroundings and the pupil’s actions how do you know what they are doing wrong, where you would need to adapt the lesson.
Another example is if the practice areas are not suitable you might be providing situations which are too hard or too easy.

Finally, is the teaching style suited to the pupil’s learning style and current ability, may need to change if your pupil is not steady learning progress.

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