What Is The Difference Between Lesson Planning And Lesson Preparation
Antígona Knknown
I have found it helpful to distinguish between two important components of planning/preparation: preparing a lesson or course and preparing myself to teach. The former is about planning a certain kind of class, agenda, or curriculum. The latter is about becoming a certain kind of person.
A final note: A good teacher is prepared to teach. This means having an idea about what will happen in class, but often it also means being able to respond to whatever starts happening and being willing and able to do something different than one planned, all in service of the students and their language acquisition, and this comes from being a certain kind of person with certain go-to practices.
I wonder if I might ask you to comment on the Almighty Objective as it relates to planning. I often find that the forming of an objective (as my county requires) makes me feel trapped. But, the verbiage of the county would have us believe that teaching a lesson without a pre-destined objective that shapes every moment of your time makes you a Bad Teacher.
What are some of those go-to activities on the master list that you talk about? I have often thought that I wanted to keep a document of go-to activities for each communicative mode. Maybe we can start creating said document.
Specifying concrete objectives for student learning will help you determine the kinds of teaching and learning activities you will use in class, while those activities will define how you will check whether the learning objectives have been accomplished (see Fig. 1).
Below are six steps to guide you when you create your first lesson plans. Each step is accompanied by a set of questions meant to prompt reflection and aid you in designing your teaching and learning activities.
Once you outline the learning objectives for the class meeting, rank them in terms of their importance. This step will prepare you for managing class time and accomplishing the more important learning objectives in case you are pressed for time. Consider the following questions:
Develop a creative introduction to the topic to stimulate interest and encourage thinking. You can use a variety of approaches to engage students (e.g., personal anecdote, historical event, thought-provoking dilemma, real-world example, short video clip, practical application, probing question, etc.). Consider the following questions when planning your introduction:
Prepare several different ways of explaining the material (real-life examples, analogies, visuals, etc.) to catch the attention of more students and appeal to different learning styles. As you plan your examples and activities, estimate how much time you will spend on each. Build in time for extended explanation or discussion, but also be prepared to move on quickly to different applications or problems, and to identify strategies that check for understanding. These questions would help you design the learning activities you will use:
GSIs know how easy it is to run out of time and not cover all of the many points they had planned to cover. A list of ten learning objectives is not realistic, so narrow down your list to the two or three key concepts, ideas, or skills you want students to learn. Instructors also agree that they often need to adjust their lesson plan during class depending on what the students need. Your list of prioritized learning objectives will help you make decisions on the spot and adjust your lesson plan as needed. Having additional examples or alternative activities will also allow you to be flexible. A realistic timeline will reflect your flexibility and readiness to adapt to the specific classroom environment. Here are some strategies for creating a realistic timeline:
Letting your students know what they will be learning and doing in class will help keep them more engaged and on track. You can share your lesson plan by writing a brief agenda on the board or telling students explicitly what they will be learning and doing in class. You can outline on the board or on a handout the learning objectives for the class. Providing a meaningful organization of the class time can help students not only remember better, but also follow your presentation and understand the rationale behind in-class activities. Having a clearly visible agenda (e.g., on the board) will also help you and students stay on track.
I am totally throwing my friend under the bus but a teacher I work with and someone I have spent some time coaching once told me that she spends an average of FOURTEEN HOURS lesson planning each week.
The reason she spends fourteen hours planning is that her planning routine involves her getting to school early and prepping for the day at that time. She has a general direction of what she is doing each day, but getting materials ready and figuring out specifics is figured out then.
But, keep in mind that I have been teaching a few years and I have spent the past three years in the same grade level with the same team. I also only teach two subjects. So that is going to make things a little bit easier for me.
I use my conference for this, after school, and lunch if I need to. In my first few years of teaching, I would even bring my team lesson plans home with me and read them in the morning before I got in the car to go to work and then think about them during my drive to work.
During those years I usually brought my planner home on Wednesday night and sat in front of the TV while I planned. (It made it a little bit more fun.) As the years have gone on, I have been able to shorten my time planning.
Our first year together was the year our campus hired Debbie Diller as a consultant for our school. Debbie spent an afternoon with us walking through a lesson planning format that allowed for deeper and richer lesson planning conversations.
I also have a green folder that rotates between drawers and that is where I put any notes or flyers that need to be passed out at the end of the day. (Also, I recorded a video about how I use my Material Drawers)
Anchor charts I make get clipped into a magnet and hung on the side of my filing cabinet. Any construction size papers lay on top of the white drawers. Remember when I talked about everything having a home in the classroom cabinet organization blog post? This is what I am talking about!
Our job is to teach. I know that. You know that. I know that we could go into a really long and heated debate about all the things we have to do that take away from teaching. But ultimately, our job is to teach.
An effective lesson plan demonstrates how a teacher creates objectives for his or her students and measures how those objectives are mastered. Creating a lesson plan begins with aligning state standards to your curriculum and then narrowing the focus to determine which objectives you want your students to meet within a specific unit of study.
Strong lesson plans are the foundation of an efficient classroom environment for both the teacher and the students. Lesson plans contain several components that can fit into one of three categories: What am I teaching? How am I going to teach it? How will I assess what the students have learned?
Lesson planning is very important. A well-designed lesson plan helps everyone understand the goals of a particular lesson. Lesson plans allow teachers to take the curriculum and turn it into engaging and meaningful activities for students. It also outlines the materials needed and what special considerations need to be taken into consideration such as the individual learning requirements of the students.
While this format serves as a lesson planning guideline for student teachers, it is important to recognize that a lesson plan for an elementary school Math class looks much different from a lesson plan for a high school English Language Arts class.
Having an overarching idea of what you want to teach in a unit plan allows teachers to determine what essential questions will be addressed, which resources will be used throughout the unit, and which vocabulary words or skills need to be front-loaded prior to beginning individual lesson plans within the unit.
Duration is a key feature of lesson planning. Since no two classrooms are identical in terms of how students learn and retain information, it is crucial for a teacher to get to know their students in order to create appropriate timelines. Formative and summative assessments can be implemented to allow a teacher to determine if a lesson objective needs to be retaught or revisited within a unit.
The way you structure each lesson relates to how well you know your students and what type of learners they are. Are there students with Individualized Education Plans or 504 Plans who require modifications to the curriculum or extended time? Are there gifted students in the class? Are there students who seem to grasp learning objectives during classroom checks for understanding, but fail their assessments?
Keeping in mind that educators are working with a tech-savvy generation, lesson plans that integrate technology engage students actively. From using Google Earth in a geography lesson to dialing up YouTube videos of clips of Shakespearean performances, technology can be implemented in the classroom in a variety of ways that make learning a more demonstrative and interactive endeavor. This helps give teachers a genuine depiction of their students' capabilities and begin working towards building a proficient classroom.
Teachers evaluate the success of their lesson plans through student assessments. Summative and formative evaluations may give the teacher an indication if the activity and materials were effective in helping their students learn. Assessing student progress can help teachers understand if they should keep lesson plan, update, or remove it from the curriculum.
Since elementary students are not as cognitively developed as high school students, elementary school teachers should create lesson objectives, activities, and assessments that cater to the early stages of learning, such as memorization, understanding, and application. However, middle school and high school teachers can focus on the top-tier of the hierarchy that involve skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and creating within their lesson plans.
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