The Lesson Plan

When you hear the words, lesson and plan, what comes to mind? Surely these two words mean different things to different people. If you are a department chair or principal, the lesson plan may be a list of activities that a substitute teacher can assign students while the teacher of record is out sick.

To a curriculum director, the lesson plan may be about goals, objectives, alignment of standards, scope and sequence. To the academic, the lesson plan may be an idea where theory meets practice. To me, the classroom teacher, the lesson plan is a little bit of all these things, but it is mostly a road map. The lesson plan guides me through one unit of learning that lasts less than an hour. It fits into a larger unit that has goals and standards associated with it. On the Monday morning after Christmas vacation the most practical thing you can do (besides coffee) is look at your lesson plan.

Here are some things to ask yourself when you are planning:

1. Time & Sequence.

How are you going to make the best use of your student's time during class? Most new teachers don't plan enough material to cover one period, and then they are in trouble when they come up ten minutes short. Or, more likely, they have the right amount of material, but rush through it too fast due to nerves and then they have that dreaded extra ten minutes at the end of the period. This is when your students will start horsing around, teasing each other and getting into trouble. This means you should overplan, so that will rarely happen. But, then remember not to rush.

The other question is what sequence do I put things in? What comes first? Why? What comes next, then what, then after that? How do you end? How many activities will you have? Why? Will you have enough time? Too much? If you don't have enough time, how will you end gracefully?

2. Objectives. What do you want them to be able to do by the end of the class? What do you want them to know? What are your essential questions?

3. Assessment. Are you going to evaluate the students? How? Is that a fair assessment? Are you going to evaluate yourself?

4. Learning styles. What can you do to teach to tactile and visual learners as well as auditory learners? What kinds of accommodations will you make for students on IEPs or 504s?

5. Management. If your class is too chaotic, your students will not feel safe. They will not listen to or hear your directions when you give them. What can your lesson do to manage your class?

6. Fun. Students learn best when they are excited, when they are engaged in their task due to high interest. Adults too. What can you put into your plan that might be fun for students?

7. Meaning. There is nothing more frustrating to students of all ages than a lesson that lacks meaning. What can you do to make the lesson meaningful?

8. Realism. We all have great ideas, but when we put them into action, they naturally come out differently than we expect. Therefore, it is important to be realistic about what you hope to accomplish in a period. How can your lesson be both idealistic and practical?

9. Who is at the center? Student-centered classrooms have been popular for some time now. But, managing this type of environment can take experience. There is nothing wrong with a teacher-centered classroom that works. Hybrids are even better. Obviously, you (the teacher) are in charge at all times, but who is at the center? And when? And when do you do group work? And why? And how?

10. Technology. Depending on where you teach and what you teach, you will have the opportunity to use technology at varying levels of sophistication. How will you use it? Are you ready? Are your students ready? How will it help them learn? What can you put into your plan that brings technology into the classroom in a meaningful way?

11. Homework. I have always had a love/hate relationship with homework. Etta Kralovec and John Buell (2000) in their book, The end of homework, question the value of homework. They don't dismiss homework outright. And they don't say that it is useless, but they do report that there is little research done on how effective it is. It is surprising that in this day of scientifically-oriented educational policy, the most pervasive educational practice has not been studied in depth. Harris Cooper, author of Homework (1989) writes that the studies conducted on using homework to boost achievement—really the only ones that have been done on homework at all—contradict each other. Yet, we often give homework. Why? Parents expect it? Students expect it? Principals expect us to give it? Cooper reports that national surveys suggest that teachers believe homework helps students achieve. Our beliefs often dictate out actions, despite the lack of data we might have at hand.

It may be that our beliefs are true, that homework is helpful, but if it is, it is only the most meaningful, most accessible, and most interesting homework that achieves our teaching goals. I don't give homework, if it I don't think my students will find meaning in it. I just don't. Yet, I usually give homework. What can you do to make homework meaningful? Can you limit the homework assignment, so students don't get caught up struggling all night on it? Can you make homework easy enough that students do not have to rely heavily on their parents or consider cheating?

12. Intelligences & Taxonomies. How does your lesson plan address Gardner's theory multiple intelligences? Can your lesson plan challenge students to use intelligences that they have not yet stretched beyond their comfort zone to use? Can the plan set students up for success by giving all students a chance to play to their strengths? i.e. Most school activities are predicated on students being able to use their verbal-linguistic talents or their logical-mathematical talents to achieve new knowledge. And they do not test or build upon the other talents Gardner points out that we may have, for example, interpersonal, intrapersonal and bodily- kinesthetic. How can our plans challenge students to discover new muscles while exercising the ones they are used to using.

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy is another idea to consider while planning. Bloom's Taxonomy is a multi-leveled schema for classifying cognitive skills depicting six levels of complexity. It is important to consider, so that teachers promote higher order thinking skills. How can your plans bring in as many of these levels as possible?

I think that's enough of my ramble on planning for now. Let's look at the different models for how to plan.

Models of Planning.

Creative Process Model Beatrice Cain (1989) in her article, With worldmaking, planning models matter, published in English Education, writes that by creating a lesson plan, the teacher is creating a learning experience. Her theory is that teachers like artists or engineers need to design instruction based on their own design variables and their own vision. She describes the process of planning as: preplanning, planning and postplanning.

Preplanning requires: brainstorming, researching and collecting materials. It is the dreaming up part of the plan.

Then there is the planning stage. It involves: organizing, sequencing and integrating. This is the writing down part of the plan.

Then, there is the post planning. This is about trying it out and testing it in the classroom. Actually teaching. Afterward, you reflect, evaluate and reorganize the lesson for the next time.

Do classroom teachers actually use this creative process model? Yes. But they do it very quickly.

They generate ideas when talking to other teachers, while at the movies, and in their cars on the way to work. Many of my best ideas come to me while I'm teaching or in my dreams.

Teachers then write down these ideas into a plan that has desired outcomes, activities and methods of evaluation. When they do this, they expand these dreamed up ideas. These lesson plans can look very different in terms of format, but they have these certain things in common: desired outcomes, activities and methods of evaluation.

Then, they try out the lesson plan by teaching the lesson. And after the lesson, they jot down what worked, what did not and what they would do differently. We usually write them in the margins of plan books or at the bottom of the word document.

The creative process model is about allowing the teacher to be a designer of curriculum.

Conversation-Based Model