Follow a consistent teaching pattern. 
Take the students through a similar set of steps in each lesson.
Don’t confuse them with unnecessary departures from the pattern.
Make them feel comfortable within a pattern that they can rely on.

. . . follow a consistent teaching pattern. The students benefit from a consistent pattern in several ways:

• Because the lesson pattern is predictable, the students don’t have to learn a new pattern from lesson to lesson; they can concentrate on the content.
• Because the modes of response are predictable, the students don’t have to adapt to a new mode of response from lesson to lesson; they can concentrate on the content.
• Because the layout is similar, the students don’t have to find their way through a new layout from lesson to lesson; they can concentrate on the content.
• Because the flow of instruction and response becomes familiar and therefore predictable, the students develop a sense of the rhythm of a lesson, and they can predict how much more remains to be done.

Not necessarily.  Repetition of a pattern doesn’t make a course dull, though repetition of content may.
    As the instructor, you may feel an urge to vary the pattern of instruction, just for variety’s sake.  Fight that urge.  The student isn’t well served by changes in the instructional pattern, because every change means that the student has to learn something new—how to follow the lesson or respond to the lesson—that is not part of the skill or concept that you are trying to teach.
    The variety in the lesson should come from the content and illlustrations, not the instructional approach.
 

Here is a pattern that works:

Each of the steps in this instructional pattern is developed in an individual lesson.  We think that following the lessons in sequence is the best way to see the development of the instructional pattern, but we've provided links to all the lessons here.

COURSE CONTENTS

ERIC KRAFT