detriment to the students. In fact, it turned out that the Soviet teachers were far more lenient than our teachers in evaluating their students’ knowledge. But the conclusion was that it was the Soviet teachers’ accomplishment that their students achieved better marks than from our teachers.
Plans and outlines. During conferences individual subject sections discussed the quality and volume of material for the upcoming school period, the quality and quantity of writing assignments, and the manner of evaluating assignments manner. They prepared as detailed work plans as possible, and each teacher had to strictly obey the passed principles, no, not passed, but rather imposed by the superior school authorities, even though in theory all those guidelines were to be subject to discussion. In practice, however, it meant that they were implemented.
[3] In accordance with the work plan prepared during the conference, each teacher had to prepare an “outline”, that is, a detailed lesson plan broken down to minutes. A sample lesson plan contained the following points:
1) Checking the students’ attendance (2 min.)
2) Calling the students to the board plus a list of their names (3–4) – 15 min.
3) Homework check – 5 min.
4) Explanation of new material – 15 min.
5) Checking to see if the students have understood the new material
(8 min.)
=45 minutes
The plan also had to precisely specify the planned topic, grammar item, or exercises, etc.
The introduction of that system not only utterly absorbed the teachers, completely exhausting their energy, but also killed their initiative as they had to work in nervous tension and with a watch in hand to precisely carry out the plan.
We should also bear in mind that the teachers had to prepare overall work plans for the entire semester in three copies and the lesson plans in two copies, [4] as both the work plans and the lesson plans were kept not only in the school administration, or actually under the zavped’s control, but also in the district inspector’s office at the board of education. That was how the authorities achieved the following objective: both the board of education and the school administration knew what material would be covered
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