'Teaching Script' enhances classroom time management

What does it take for teachers to deliver mathematics or science lessons efficiently in one hour? 

“Teaching Script” is the answer from the Kenan Institute Asia. 

“It promises to increase teaching effectiveness and to stimulate students’ interest,” said Chodok Panyavaranant, the institutes senior educational consultant. 

Teaching Script involves five steps, all designed to boost teachers’ potential for time management, delivery of lessons, and creation of a good classroom climate. If implemented in the right manner, it can hold students’ attention and increase their understanding of the lessons. 

Chodok explained the five steps – warm-up, introduction, body, closing, and exit ticket – at the “Development of Human Resources for Thai Education” seminar held last week by The Boeing Company and Kenan Institute Asia at The Windsor Suites Hotel in Bangkok.

The warm-up is the step where the teacher guides the students in how to prepare for a new lesson. The introduction is to give students a pre-test to assess how much they know about the new chapter. The “body” step is learning activities, “closing” is the lesson’s conclusion, and “exit ticket” is the post-test. Each step has a set length of time so that teachers will finish their prepared lessons quickly and efficientl, he said.

Teaching Script is a Boeing Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) project. It was initiated by The Boeing Company and Kenan Institute and has been operating since 2009 to improve the quality of science and mathematics teaching because these are the prerequisite subjects for analytical thinking development. The aim is to improve students’ analytic thinking skills, particularly important in this technology-driven age.

Chodok said the project offered a four-day training period for primary-school teachers from Bangkok and nearby provinces such as Nakhon Nayok, Samut Prakan and Nonthaburi, now with 581 participating teachers from 161 schools. 

After the four-day session, the Boeing TEL project will have a “teaching plan contest”, where the teachers’ performance is observed by video or in a school visit. It is designed to further the knowledge learned by participating teachers, and the judging criteria are based on the outstanding qualities in various aspects, for instance teaching strategy, structure of classroom activities, question strategy and the students’ response. 

The three science and three math teachers winning the contest will be used as models for other teachers striving to improve their performance.

Wanuthai Kummoon, a science teacher from Watkingkaew School, in Samut Prakan, one of the model teachers, said the experience of teaching for more than 20 years, including the preparation of lesson plans and participating in seminars held by government agencies, could not solve the problems he faced. But Teaching Script showed him how to solve the problem of time allocation, such as introducing new lessons to students in no more than seven minutes. 

Another model teacher, Methenee Petchsook, a math teacher from Bangchak School in Bangkok, said the “exit ticket” step could help to verify how well the students understood the lesson. Also by limiting the time for the students to find an answer free up teachers to go on to another topic by finishing lessons faster.

Chadaporn Dutchtuyawat, a math teacher from Ban Nai Phol School, said the training provided many planning techniques. For instance, using stories could make the students understand mathematical concepts clearly.