OUTLINE—­CHAPTER XIV

The steps involved in the preparation of a lesson:  The aim; organization; illustration; application; questions.—­Problems involved in the presentation of a lesson:  The point of contact; illustration; the lesson statement.—­Various possibilities.—­The review:  questioning; application.—­The matter summarized.

So many textbooks have been written about teaching—­so many points of view have been advanced—­such a variety of terminology has been employed, even in the expression of a single educational notion—­that beginning teachers are frequently at a loss to know just how to set about the task of teaching.  Leaving for further consideration the more purely theoretical aspects of our problem, let us face the questions of most immediate concern: 

  HOW TO PREPARE A LESSON. 
  HOW TO PRESENT A LESSON.

Is there not a common-sense procedure which we can agree to as promising best results in these two fundamental steps?  At the outset let us agree that preparation and presentation are inseparable aspects of but one process.  Preparation consists of the work done behind the scenes—­presentation involves the getting over of the results of that work to the audience—­the class.  Frequently teachers are confused because they mistake directions governing preparation as applying to presentation.  For instance, one teacher proceeded to drill a class of small children on the memorizing of the aim—­an abstract general truth—­unmindful of the fact that the aim was set down for the teacher’s guidance—­a focus for his preparation done behind the scenes.

Though in the preparation of a lesson we keep the aim clearly in mind, and though, when we stand before our class, we let it function in the background of our consciousness as an objective in our procedure, we ought not to hurl it at our class.  As a generalized truth it can make but little appeal to young minds, and it ought to be self-evident, at the end of a successful recitation, to mature minds.

And so with the matter of organization.  We skeletonize our thoughts behind the scenes, but the skeleton is rather an unsightly specimen to exhibit before a class.  The outline should be inherent in the lesson as presented, but it ought not to protrude so that the means will be mistaken for an end.  Subsequent chapters will illustrate both the selection of an aim and its elaboration through suitable organization.

The successful preparation of a lesson involves at least five major steps.  They are named here that the problem of preparation may be grasped as a whole.  Later chapters will develop at length each step in its turn.

1. The Aim. A generalized statement, a kernel of truth about which all of the facts of the lesson are made to center.  A lesson may be built up on a passage of scripture, on the experience of a person or a people, or on a vital question, etc.  But in any case, though we are interested in the facts involved, we are interested not in the facts as an end in themselves, but rather because of the truth involved in the facts.  In other words, we seek to sift out of the material offered in a lesson an essential truth which helps us in a solution of the problems of life.  Attention to the aim is a guarantee against mere running over of matter of fact.