Learning should be progressive and meaningful, and should be planned for and taught in ways

that encourage learners to recognise that the knowledge, skills and attitudes identified are linked.
These aspirations can only be achieved through high quality teaching and learning and the
establishment of a supportive climate for learning. All teachers have an important role in
modeling and promoting an attitude that as pupil experience the lesson, they may decide whether
they will or will not invest their time and energy to learn the material. This presentation will
focus on six factors that a teacher should consider to make a Religious and Moral Education
lesson effective that is objectives to be achieved, time frame of the lesson, requirements of the
pupils, the content to be covered, materials to be used as well as previewing the lesson. The term
factors will be defined.

Farrant (1988: 35) defines factors as “something that helps produce or influence a result, things
that cause something to happen”. Furthermore, Bloom (1976) sees factors as one of the elements
contributing to a particular result or situation. Factors are a part or element that contributes to a
result (Thompson 2008). Therefore from the above definition, factors are things that influence
whether an event happens or the way that it happens.

An effective teacher should consider the pupils first before the start of any lesson that is know
what your students have already learned. This is usually pretty easy since you would have been
teaching your own pupils. Grimmit (2001) proposes that the teacher should know the pupils
ability levels, backgrounds, interest levels, attention spans, ability to work together in groups,
prior knowledge and learning experiences, special needs or accommodations, and learning
preferences. This may not happen as quickly as you would like, but it is important for designing
instruction that will meet the needs of your students. This will make a teacher to be able to plan
effectively for the lesson as he or she will be well versed with the knowledge on the pupils. For
example when teaching the topic on “the good Samaritan”, the teacher should realize that pupils
understand the relationship of the Jews and the Samaritans so that they can then derive the moral
value of care that was shown by the Samaritan. The same factors play into how you decide to
have your students practice new material, though in slightly different ways.
Furthermore, for a lesson to be effective there is need to outline the learning objectives. Bennett
(2000) recommends that the first step is to determine what you want students to learn and be able
to do at the end of the lesson. The teacher needs to specify the objectives for student learning by
answering the following questions:

What is the topic of the lesson?

What do I want students to learn?

What do I want them to understand and be able to do at the end of class?

What do I want them to take away from this particular lesson?

Once you outline the learning objectives for the lesson, rank them in terms of their importance.
Grimmit (2001) acknowledges that this step will prepare you for managing class time and
accomplishing the more important learning objectives in case you are pressed for time. In an
R.M.E lesson, it is important to state the objectives in the manner that moral values are deduced.
This means that the objectives should be anything that sets up a condition for students to engage
in the task being observed and measured for performance. The heart of the objective is the task
that the student is expected to perform.

More so it is important to consider what you bring to the table to make the conduction of a lesson
effective. Gibbon (2013) suggests that every single person on earth has some unique qualities
and they understand better through different points of view. The teacher should have materials
that are available to help teach for success. In an R.M.E lesson it is always better to have
concrete media when conducting a lesson. For example when teaching the “the creation story”, it
will be best to bring pictures showing the sun, moon, water and different animals so that pupils
understand better. The teacher can also use resource persons especially for lessons that involve
other religions so that the information will be first hand and from a person with adequate
knowledge. Farrant (1988) proposes that a wise teacher should take and keep an inventory of the
materials and resources that are available to you as a teacher. For example technology, software,
audio visuals, teacher mentors, community resources, equipment, manipulatives, library
resources, local guest speakers, volunteers, or any materials that can assist you in teaching.
In addition, the demands of the lesson should go hand in hand with amount of time allocated for
that lesson. Fink (2005) advocates that the amount of time dedicated to student practice should
be a function of the time students need to master the objective. The level of the objective might
also affect the amount of time that should be dedicated to student practice. Practice is the most
important part of the lesson cycle, so for a lesson to be effective students should be given enough
time to practice and internalize the content of the lesson. Sousa (2006) advises that knowledge
and comprehension activities generally only need to be of short duration. Such activities are
suitable to discrete periods of class time. On the other hand, application activities generally take
longer, depending on their complexity. Most R.M.E lessons require application as pupils have to
link what they have been taught to their experiences and also to deduce moral values from what
would have been taught.

Furthermore the teacher should have a clear understanding of the content that is to list the
important facts, key concepts, skills, or key vocabulary terms that you intend to cover to make a
lesson effective. Fink (2005) advocates that the teacher can prepare an outline with key learning
outcomes and should always remember to refer to your curriculum guides. He furthers on by
saying in connection with introducing new material, some concepts and skills, by their very
nature, are best presented and practiced in particular ways. For example if your objective
involves the mastery of some process your system of practice should probably involve repeated
completion of that process. When teaching the topic family problems and the story of Joseph and
his family at grade three level, the teacher should list the key terms involved in the story that is
hatred and jealousy and pupils should understand those before dwelling into the stories so that
moral values can be deduced. Letting your students know what they will be learning and doing in
class will help keep them more engaged and on track.

Last but not least, to make the lesson more effective the teacher should develop a conclusion and
a preview that is to go over the material covered in class by summarizing the main points of the
lesson. Bloom (1976) proposes that one can do this in a number of ways, you can state the main
points yourself for example by saying “Today we talked about…”, you can also ask a pupils to
help you summarize them, or you can even ask all students to write down on a piece of paper
what they think were the main points of the lesson. For an R.M.E lesson this is very important as
the teacher will be reinforcing on the concept of the moral values as well as to link to the stories
that will have been talked about in the lesson and also applying them to real life. This will review
the pupil’s answers to gauge their understanding of the topic and then explain anything unclear.

From the above discussion it can be seen that for a lesson to be effective, should provide you
with a general outline of your teaching goals, learning objectives, and means to accomplish
them. Tis will always remind the teacher on what to do and how to do it. A productive lesson is
not one in which everything goes exactly as planned, but one in which both students and
instructor learn from each other. This presentation focused on six elements that can be
considered in making a lesson successful that is taking note of the objectives to be achieved, time
frame of the lesson, requirements of the pupils, the content to be covered, materials to be used as
well as previewing the lesson.
REFERENCE LIST

Bennett, N. (2000) ‘The effective primary school teacher: the search for a theory of pedagogy’.
Teaching. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/midwest/pdf/REL_2007030.pdf

Bloom, B. (1976) Human characteristics and school learning. New York: McGraw Hill.

Farrant, J.S. (1988) (Reprinted in 1994). Principles and Practice of Education. Singapore:
Longman Group.

Fink, D. L. (2005). Integrated course design. Retrieved from http://ideaedu.org/wp-

content/uploads/2014/11/Idea_Paper_42.pdf

Gibbon, C. (2013) Monitoring education: indicators, quality and effectiveness. Retrieved from
https://www.georgiastandards.org/Frameworks/Pages/BrowseFrameworks/modernlang

Grimmit, M. (2001). What Can I Do in Religious Education? England: Mayhew McCrimmon

Ltd

Sousa, D. (2006). How the brain learns: A classroom teacher's guide. Retrieved from
http://www.istecentral.com/2009/12/04/tic-tac-toeing-with-choice-boardsin-any-classroom

Thompson, J. (2008). Education and Religion. New York: Harper and Row.