Interviewers need all the help they can get to choose the right new person to join their team. My choice has always been influenced by seeing how candidates relate to children on a tour of the school. It’s logical for an interviewer to want to see a prospective teacher in a classroom, running a lesson. The scenario may be artificial, but you can make it work for you.

In inviting you to deliver a lesson, a good school will make the context clear, offer you information about the group you’ll be teaching and what work they have been doing recently. They may even suggest a topic for you. Interviewers want to see you at your best and find the real teacher in you. Remember that all they know about you at this stage is what you’ve put on paper.

So what’s an interviewer looking for? Enthusiasm, above all else - enthusiasm for teaching, for learning, for the subject. This is closely followed by evidence that you actually like children and can build good relationships with them. Good subject knowledge will clinch it as long as you have the other qualities. But how do you communicate all that in a single lesson, and with a group you’ve never met before?

Keep it simple Have your resources ready, and don’t rely on complicated equipment. Videos and overhead projectors are fine if you’re sure they will work, but be ready with an alternative approach. Remember that it is the quality of your interaction that is being observed, not your mastery of the remote control.

Keep it active There are no points for showing that you can keep kids silent for 50 minutes while they write about their last holiday.

Be well prepared, but notover-prepared You mustn’t be so anxious about sticking to your plan that you miss the opportunities students offer you. Have a clear idea of where you want to go, but be ready to change the route if you’re offered an opening.

The secret lies in the way you manage the classroom. Before you set foot in it, make sure you know and follow established school policy about starting lessons. Do kids line up outside the classroom? Do they stand up quietly and wait to be told what to do next? Get that right and you’ll have shown that you are ready to fit in with the way the school does things.

Try to make sure that children know who you are and why you are there. Unless they are unregenerate hooligans (this is unlikely - the school is trying to project a positive image, too), this knowledge should help to bring them onside.

Be very explicit indeed about what you intend to achieve in the lesson. Spell out the new skills and understanding that children will acquire. Put the learning into context - “You can use what you learn today to help with revision your next test reading poems.” Make sure that you give your observer a written copy of your lesson plan, too - if nothing else, this will give them something to follow up in the interview.

As this is a one-off lesson, it’s likely to be self-contained, predominantly oral, and active. Your first task is to get everyone involved. Use question and answer first to establish prior knowledge on which to build your lesson and your relationships. Show that you value contributions by asking children’s names and using them.

Move quickly on to the active, exploratory phase. Don’t hand out resources yourself - have a class member do that. This will offer more evidence that you can build relationships. Keep the activity simple, make the task clear, set a time frame, and be sure that everyone knows what feedback you’re expecting - oral reporting, probably. Move around the room, talk to kids as they work, distribute yourself evenly, and make sure you have spoken to everyone and been seen to have done that.

In the final phase, draw the class together, draw conclusions from the activity and summarise the learning.

Spell out to them and to the observer what they now know that they didn’t know before. If you have a particularly lively student, have him or her record the comments on the whiteboard so that you have simultaneously harnessed the excess energy and are free to manage the contributions.

Try to imply that you’ve offered something of continuing value and interest by leaving the class with suggestions for extending or practising what you’ve taught them - ideas for further reading, or a few related Internet sites they could visit.

And here’s a final nugget of wisdom, gleaned from years of experience in dealing with horses, dogs and children: try to visualise, very clearly, what you want to happen at the end of what you’re trying to do. Keep your eye on that outcome, and it will come to pass.

Harry Dodds is a freelance writer. He also teaches at Gosford Hill school, Oxfordshire