Mastering Lesson Pacing with Coteach

In our last blog post, we explored how Coteach can help you internalize and customize a lesson. Today we'll consider another way to use Coteach: optimizing lesson pacing. You might be wondering what pacing has to do with internalization. Quite simply, anyone can trim a lesson by cutting sections at will. It's another thing altogether to strategically pace a lesson without sacrificing learning targets and essential activities. Again, this is where Coteach can help!

Before we dive in though, let's consider why thoughtful pacing is necessary. IM lessons are designed to be 60 minutes long, but many of us do not have that many daily instructional minutes. Even if we do, IM - like most high quality materials - contains a wealth of content that is difficult to fully cover within allocated timeframes. So, even in ideal circumstances, intentional pacing decisions often need to be made.

Effective pacing isn't just about finishing faster—it's about ensuring students engage meaningfully with the most important content. When using Coteach to optimize lesson pacing, incorporate the internalization concepts we covered previously into your prompts. This keeps you, the expert teacher, in the loop, and ensures the lesson remains faithful to the learning targets. You can do this by first asking Coteach:

What are the standards aligned learning targets and lesson objectives?

How do each of the lesson activities align to these learning targets?

You then might prompt Coteach with questions like:

Can you help me pace this lesson to fit into a 45 minute period while ensuring all essential activities support the lesson objectives and standards aligned learning targets?

Which activities in this lesson are most critical for meeting the learning targets, and which could be condensed or assigned as independent work?

How might I modify the warm-up to maintain its purpose but complete it in 5 minutes instead of 10?

Can you suggest which practice problems are most representative and could be prioritized if time is limited?

What's a more time-efficient way to structure the synthesis discussion while still ensuring students consolidate their learning?

Wrap up by checking that your paced version of the lesson maintains all the core components you need to see. For example, does it still include the Warm-up, aligned activities, synthesis, and cool-down? Are you satisfied with how Coteach has adjusted the timing and depth of each activity? If not, prompt Coteach to make the refinements you want to see.

Coteach is a powerful tool for finding that perfect lesson rhythm, but remember, you're the expert teacher, and ultimately you decide if its pacing recommendations meet the needs of your students!

Ready to adjust pacing for your upcoming lessons? Head to Coteach now!