Back up plan

"Ang hirap pag bata!", I exclaimed as I become more frustrated while working on my instructional design. Certainly, in dealing with children, it requires more creativity. You have to squeeze everything out of your head and let your imagination wander. That was the ultimate challenge I encountered that moment.

However, more than that, I learned to appreciate what teachers do behind the scenes through this workshop. We always see them inside a classroom, giving us lectures, formative activities and exams, but what we do not know is the preparation they do in order to make a session worthwhile.

On working on the instructional design, there are really a lot of things you have to consider. You do not just randomly choose the content of what you want to include in your lesson and decide to use an arbitrary teaching method. It entails careful planning. From identifying the objectives to choosing an evaluation method, you must think about your learners, your resources, the skills you can offer and the possible strategy you can employ. Your ID should spell attainable, measurable and appropriate. This design would be your plan A.

But just like any other carefully planned strategy, there should be a "back up plan". In our case, we were told that children aged 3-12 will most likely participate in the activity. Since this is quite a wide range, we were advised to prepare separate objectives. This only shows how critical it is to consider your learner's qualities and ultimately, adjust your strategies accordingly. A flexible design is really one of the important preparations a teacher must do.

Although creating an instructional design sounds too technical for teaching, in PT practice, this is your starting point. It is your exhaustive (as possible) instructional design which directs an effective therapy session.