The first step in ensuring a student learns and understands a topic is to have a well thought out lesson. This will ensure the information is presented clearly to the students and in a form they can understand. Without this, the classes would be far less effective. The classes I observed had slightly different methods, but each seems to do their purpose in ensuring the lesson is understood.
The history teacher I observed has a straight forward approach. He begins every lesson with a short do now based on the previous lesson or current section. After this is gone over this review the class goes over the assigned homework. When I asked, he told me this aspect was repeated during each lesson to ensure the students are ready to move on. When starting a new lesson, he does a lot of question and answer exchanges. He moves throughout the room while doing so to keep the students’ attention on him instead of each other. This way the students can get clarification on any topic they need to. Occasionally he would pair students up to work on short work sheets, nut this was limited as since the rooms are rather small the groups could not move away from each other or be larger than two.
The math teacher has a slightly different method. Since her lessons involve learning new algebraic formulas. So she would complete an example or two for the class. Then she would have a student assist in another example. Various students would complete parts of the examples until she felt the class had an adequate grasp of the topic. During the time I observed, she was working on graphing algebraic equations so the examples not only included salving equations but graphing them as well. Thus the only way to gage if the students understand the lesson if they can explain the method of solving the equation aloud. These methods of teaching and review are only small examples of ways to structure lessons, but each fulfills its purpose.