HOW TO PASS YOUR PART 3 or STANDARDS CHECK
Part of our philosophy at PDIADI.COM is to help you achieve success in your business. We have put together a series of articles that we believe will help you pass your Standards Check & Part 3. Our courses, training, and workshops add to these articles and give you the support that you need. The courses we provide are delivered by some of the top trainers in the industry you can find a list of our trainers here. This is the first in a series:
The starting point is delivering a Great Lesson which will ensure that:
- You manage the risk.
- Give value for money.
- Learning takes place.
Ensuring learning takes place requires an understanding of how individuals learn. We know that learning comes from the individual. We cannot pour learning into the learner. For learning to take place, the learner should be encouraged to take responsibility for their learning & reflect on their learning. To allow this, the lesson is focused on the learner and tailored to suit their needs. Breaking down the learning (topics) into bite-size chunks is essential so that the learner is clear on the learning outcome (goal), for that training session. These bite-size chunks can then be built upon to cover a whole topic. Throwing all the information needed to cover a session on roundabouts makes it impossible for the learner to absorb all that information an overload often takes place, and a series of mistakes will happen. You need to be able to structure a great lesson.
How to structure a great lesson
Lesson Planning
The lesson must be negotiated to satisfy the client’s wants but more importantly what they need. You have to develop the skills to be able to satisfy the client’s learning goals and needs and gain agreement with the learner:
- Goals must be clear so that the learner knows what they are setting out to learn.
- The structure of the lesson should be clear and in agreement with the learner.
- A suitable route must be used, that will help the goal to be achieved.
- The instructor must be able to adapt the lesson plan where necessary to help the goal (learning outcome) to be achieved.
Risk Management
We teach our learners to drive in a safety-critical environment. If we could teach them to drive in an environment without fear, like a simulator there would not be any risk. We need to give people experience of the real world to help develop their self-evaluation skills, whilst ensuring that learning takes place. A driving lesson must be focused on learning taking place.
We need to manage the risk to ensure that learning takes place:
- The learner needs to understand they are responsible as the driver from the very first lesson and that you will help them manage their responsibilities.
- Directions and instructions need to be given clearly and in good time. Clarity is essential.
- You must be aware of the environment and especially the client’s actions, which will enable you if necessary to take Verbal and physical interventions early enough and when appropriate.
- You must give feedback around any safety critical issue and this must be given as soon as safely possible to ensure the learner understands the risks.
Teaching and Learning Strategies
The instructor must have a range of teaching strategies, from which they can select the most effective to ensure the learner achieves the goals agreed upon. These include:
- Understanding how people process the information you give and discover what may prevent them from learning;
- You should help them analyse their driving skills, which will help the learner be able to reflect on their driving once they are driving independently (with a parent) or in a post-test environment.
- Using examples that are relevant to the learning outcome to clarify the goal of the lesson.
- Your feedback needs to be appropriate and accurate, technically correct and comprehensive.
- Break the learning into bite-size chunks so that regular feedback around the learning outcome is built into the lesson.
- You should follow up the learner’s queries and answer them as soon as possible.
- Maintain a non-judgemental manner; avoid conversations that are not relevant to achieving the goal of the lesson.
- Encouraging the pupil to reflect on their training and how they performed.
The above lists help combine to make a great lesson.
The Part 3 – Standards Check assesses the extent to which you have included these skills and principles in your lesson.
Incorporating these skills into your driving lessons will enable you to pass your Standards Check and Part 3 and produce safer new drivers, who can reflect and take responsibility for their learning and their driving.
If you want to take your continual professional development to the next level, then check out our workshops and training by following this link.
Look out for our next article coming soon.
