1 Introduction

You will often hear that, being a well-educated person, you posses knowledge and skill that could be useful to others. And before you know it, you have agreed to teach a course or give vocational training. The day arrives and there you are facing a group of people, eager to learn from your knowledge, skill and experience.

What happens next is not always clear. You may have received little or no instructions. You have probably been handed a course outline, been given a work space, the students are ready and then?

This publication discusses guidelines to help an instructor prepare for a teaching assignment and make the lessons both useful and worthwhile. If a trainer has an idea of the background of the student, he or she can make a substantial contribution to a good understanding between him or herself and the students. Using a schematic lesson model a number of building blocks for setting up a course or series of lessons is presented.

First the didactic model of Van Gelder is presented. This is used as a guideline for this book. Step by step the components of this model are explained: the objectives the base-line situation teaching material didactic methods teaching tools the lesson plan tests and evaluation