Lesson Planning Projects
From now on you will be starting to think in more detail about the subjects that you will be teaching. As part of this process we want you to complete a minimum of two lesson planning projects.
However, while the course requires a minimum of two projects the more you can complete the easier and quicker the process will become - your first plan might take a couple of hours, or even a couple of days, but if you do a plan for every subject that you study from now on you should get the process down to 30 minutes or less.
A major benefit of understanding the lesson planning process now and completing several plans is that it will help you to recognise and deal with any situations that might arise during your exam.
Of course, a big additional benefit is that you will have lots of ideas for lessons after you qualify and will be ready to teach a wide range of customers from day-one.
The more plans you complete, the more you will recognise that there is a lot of 'cross-over' between lessons, for example, using a routine approach (hazard routine) will feature in every single lesson you do.
The plans
All lessons need a clear plan - otherwise they often become 'aimless drives' which can leave the learner with a feeling that they have not really learned anything. This would obviously be a disaster at Part-Three...
Perhaps worse than Part-Three problems, a lack of planning can have a heavy negative impact on your business after you qualify. If your customers don't feel that they are learning they will not recommend you to their friends, and are likely to leave you after a few lessons.
In an ideal world, every single lesson would have a full, formally written plan, however, the practicalities of the time and cost involved in doing this for day-to-day driving lessons make this an impossibility for most instructors. However lessons must still be planned. However, by fully understanding and getting lots of practise with formal lesson planning you will become skilled enough to 'shorten' the process while still delivering well-structured, well-planned lessons.
All lessons must have clear learning goals and a suitable training route (or at the very least, training area, such as defined housing estate). There should be a measure of current ability at the start of the lesson and again at the end to determine what progress has been made.
In day-to-day lessons you will determine the lesson plan via discussion with the learner at both the end of the previous lesson and start of the current lesson. It's helpful to make a note of the key lesson points/goals for reference during and at the end of the lesson.
Formal planning for Part-Three
To help ensure that you have a full understanding of how a lesson works and that you are able to deliver a well structured lesson for Part-Three, the final course project will require you to go through a full formal lesson planning process for your test lesson, but between now and then we want you to complete as many plans as possible based on the subjects covered in this course and/or on the DriverActive web site.
Completing a formal lesson plan will help to ensure that everything runs to time on the test day
To help you to produce your plans we have provided a two-stage planning process:
- Stage 1: Plan for your lesson
- Stage 2: Consider how you will meet the DVSA criteria when delivering your lesson
The process is fully explained in the 'Part Three Lesson Planning Project Guide Notes' - these are designed to guide you through the forms for each of the above mentioned stages. To complete the project simply download the guide and planning forms (below) and follow the instructions therein.
The guide explains how to plan lessons and specifically how to plan your Part-Three test lesson. For this you will need a 'live' pupil and your plan will be designed with the needs of that pupil in mind.
While you will have a specific pupil in mind when planning the test lesson, any interim lesson planning can be generic in nature and adaptable for any pupil, or you can use a 'fictitious' pupil who has particular issues to work on.
(As the guide explains) The time taken to complete your lesson plans will vary from person-to-person and will depend on a number of factors including your knowledge of the test/training area, the pupil and your understanding of the course material as studied so far.
The minimum time we would expect this project to take would be two hours, however, for your initial plans the average time for this type of project would be a day or longer with some students spending the equivalent of two or three days writing, honing, checking and refining their first plan.
Remember that as with everything else, the more practise you have with lesson planning the quicker and easier it will become.
Downloads
Part Three Lesson Planning Project Guide Notes
Lesson Planning Project Stage 1 - The Part 3 Test Planning Form
Lesson Planning Project Stage 2 - The DVSA Competencies Form (Comps 1 to 5)
You can download a copy of the DVSA marking/report form here
You will also need a map showing your proposed route, marked to indicate where each part of the lesson will be done (fully explained in the guide).
To help you to plan your lessons we have produced two examples below relating to the example lesson videos in this section. Study these carefully noticing similarities in the planning process.
For your first plan choose any lesson subject that you feel comfortable with. Our advice is that it is usually best to start with an early learner 'beginner' subject (for example, turning left) as this type of lesson is less complex than those you might give to an advanced stage learner.
You will need to submit a lesson plan with your coursework for assessment before starting any practical Part-Three training that you might be taking. The 'test lesson' plan will be completed before the end of your practical training - or at the end of the course if you are doing this course without practical training.
Example 1
The first example is based on the high-speed rural roads lesson
When you watch the video you will see that the instructor (Graham) deviates from the lesson plan after the learner (John) makes an error at a mini roundabout. After the error is corrected Graham brings the route and lesson back on plan and in the videos was able to complete the full planned lesson.
The timings shown on the plan might not accurately fit with the videos. There are two reasons for this.
- The videos are primarily designed to show the lesson process and examples of teaching rather than exact lesson timing.
- Any planned timings will change if an unforeseen mistake happens. Although Graham was able to complete all the planned phases in this example it's possible that in another situation a similar unforeseen mistake might require one of the phases to be dropped or shortened to accommodate remedial action after the mistake.
Download the Rural Roads lesson plan here
Example 2
The second example is based on the Moving Off and Stopping lesson
As with the first example the lesson timings might not exactly match the video - videos are edited to give an example of process and lesson content.
In this example the route was chosen for demonstration purposes, we wanted to show a 'ideal' route for practise.
The practise route is a circular road without any need to turn or emerge. You might not be able to find such an ideal route and so if you were to do a moving off lesson it might also need to include simple left turns.
Our drive out from the test centre at around 9 minutes is also 'on the limit'. Our long drive is designed to give you lots of examples about how you might talk to your learner about the intended lesson in different situations.
While DVSA will not advise about what they consider to be a 'reasonable time' for the instructor to be behind the wheel we would suggest that you keep the driving time as short as practically possible, we think that between five to a maximum of eight minutes will be considered as reasonable.
The important thing to understand is that you must make good use of the time that you are behind the wheel remembering that you are not a 'taxi driver' - the drive forms an important part of the lesson.