Flow
From the Wikipedia article on Flow (psychology), the list below seems to describe some of what is happening in one of those _really_ good lessons.
As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, there are components of an experience of flow that can be specifically enumerated; he presents eight:
# Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernable).
# Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
# A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
# Distorted sense of time – our subjective experience of time is altered.
# Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
# Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is not too easy or too difficult).
# A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
# The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
# Not all of these components are needed for flow to be experienced.
I can’t resist linking to a “C2″:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki article on “working conditions that might help professional staff – in this case programmers – reach a flow state”:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ProgrammingOutsideTheCube easily. Food for thought about teachers staff rooms?