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Route planning: Generally speaking…

This is the final article in this short route-planning series. Last week I discussed ways that you can maximise the opportunities that a route presents for practising the core skills for any given subject and that by focusing attention you can accelerate learning.

I'm a strong believer that every lesson, or at least every ‘lesson chunk' (maybe 20 minutes within a lesson) should have a clear focus with clear goals. The goals will be determined by what has gone before and what needs to be in place in order for the learner to move forwards and will ideally be determined, at least for the most part, by the learner.

However, it's not uncommon for me to get a question like: “I teach something in the region of 30 specific driving topics, but it's not unusual for a learner to take 50 lessons. Therefore, after the core subjects have been covered the lessons just tend to be ‘general drives' while the learner practises and improves, so isn't it inevitable that a lot of lessons will have no specific route – and just be general drives?”

My answer would be a question: “While the learner practises and improves what?”

At any given time you will be working on a specific aspect of driving, if not, learning will be ‘diluted' and the time taken to learn will be longer – that is if the learner doesn't give up or go somewhere else for lessons.

If you are working on s specific subject, as discusses in the earlier articles, the route must offer plenty of practise examples that match the learner's skill level.

Ah!  But what if the subject is something like mirrors, signals or general positioning… These don't have routes of their own and so must be ‘general'?

Well no… I would suggest that if, for example, you were spending a full hour on mirrors and signals you might do:

Etcetera...

Each 10 minute chunk driving a couple of times around a short focussed route.

Of course there are some routes which are specifically designed to be general in nature in order to meet certain learning and practise criteria. For example:

But although 'general' in the mix of road types and traffic situations these routes have specific learning outcomes.

First time routes and practise routes

In the earlier articles I have mentioned that each subject should have a subject introduction route and that even is an experienced learner is tackling something new for the first time the route should be a ‘undemanding' as possible (I gave a motorway example last week).

Here is an example of a route that would be great for practise, once the learner had fully mastered traffic light-controlled-crossings, but which would be totally unsuitable for a first lesson on the subject. In the video I also talk about ‘lesson focus' at a set of traffic lights.  (The video was shot during an ‘ADI Trainer Training' session in which we were discussing route planning for learners and ADI Training.)

Mistakes

Following on from my comments on ‘lesson focus', this also applies when correcting mistakes.

Sometimes after an error that is unrelated to the core-topic that the learner is working on it might be necessary to change route, but perhaps not as often as you might think.

There have been times after Standards-Checks when examiners have said something like

"You should have stopped what you were doing, changed the route and worked on that mistake".

Unfortunately comments like this often get translated to misleading 'global catch-alls' like:

"If the learner makes a non-related mistake you have to change the lesson plan".

Examiners mark what they see. If they feel something should have been dealt with they will comment, and often offer advice. While the advise is usually sound, it is only the examiner's ideas of how the situation might have been dealt with - and while I have every respect for examiners, most of them are not teachers and have had relatively little teaching experience (if any). If the examiner sees that something has been dealt with adequately there will be no need to offer advice.

The example below demonstrates how and why it is often not necessary to change either the core lesson-plan or route. In fact it's usually quite easy to enhance the lesson and deal with the mistake while keeping focus on the core subject.

Example: 

If the driver approaches a junction too fast during a ‘pedestrian crossing' chunk of a lesson you can ‘cross-seed' the topics. Your conversation will be a dialogue, perhaps question driven (not a lecture as in my version!)  However, my example is a monologue explanation to give you an idea. (This monologue 'lecture' would have been great for a check-test 12 years ago! But would have probably alienated the learner.)

“OK John, as you know, we are currently working on pedestrian crossings.

It's important to adjust your speed on the approach to crossings because of the dangers of pedestrian stepping out on or near the crossing. If you approach too fast and stop suddenly, the vehicle behind could shunt you into a pedestrian.

Notice that at the last junction we couldn't see around the corner and so there could also have been pedestrian there… If that had been the case you might not have been able to stop in time given the speed that you were going. Of course there is also the danger of vehicles at the junction.

At the next crossing we'll think about getting the speed on approach right based on what we can see and then apply the same rules to the following junctions.”

If you are adopting ‘short repeating routes' as discussed in this series, you will be coming back to the situation again in a few minutes anyway.

A couple more route examples

I'll finish with a couple more route examples – this time for ‘meet-vehicles'. The video shows a route that might be used when first introducing the concept and then a far more complex route that would be moving towards test standard.

One final thing that I might not have mentioned. Each time you devise a route you are effectively getting a second route free - simply by driving around the route the other way! Be careful though… A route that is easy in one direction might be very different when driven in the opposite direction.

This is the final article in this section.