Lesson Planning

InTASC Standard #7: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context

Introduction to Lesson Planning

Following the backwards planning process of creating long-term and unit plans, I curate daily and weekly lesson plans for my 7th grade science classes. Daily and weekly plans help me break down the learning for students and support them in meeting objectives along the path to year-long goals. I work to effectively create opportunities for all of my learners through plans that are differentiated, utilize cross-disciplinary skills and concepts, and incorporate specific opportunities for students to engage with topics that they are interested in and that are relevant to their community context.

Content and Curriculum

Daily and weekly plans are based upon Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and performance expectations, essential questions and objectives, and goals that were outlined in both unit and long-term plans. I take the information from these other plans in order to inform the goals and objectives I have for my students every day. Importantly, daily and weekly lesson plans allow me to specify the exact content I will be covering as well as the curriculum, differentiation techniques, and instructional strategies I will use to bring this learning to life.

Daily Lesson Plan

I utilize a backwards planned daily lesson that is rigorous in content and that incorporates a variety of differentiation and scaffolding strategies to meet students where they are. My daily lesson plan highlights what specific actions students will take at every part of the lesson as well as the rationale for these interventions.

Every daily lesson plan includes the daily objective or goal that I have for students. Students write this objective in their weekly Do Now templates following their Do Now at the beginning of class. Objectives demonstrate both to myself and to students what their goal is by the end of that particular lesson or lesson cycle. Each lesson plan also includes the standards NGSS alignment. I can understand my students' progress toward meeting mastery on these standards if I am able to determine which standards correspond with the lesson. Every lesson also includes the class assessment, (exit ticket,) and homework that students will complete that day. This information shows me how I will purposefully use formative assessments both during and following the lesson to actively monitor learner progress.

My daily lesson structure follows a similar structure that is based on NGSS phenomena-based learning and student-led inquiry. Students begin by building off of their prior knowledge through a Do Now question. Students are encouraged to use evidence from their own lives and from class to support their responses and to guess even if they do not know the answer. This activates students' prior knowledge and prepares them for the learning later in the lesson. During the lesson, I support students in hands-on learning opportunities based on real world phenomena. Students explore questions and generate their own understandings through scaffolded activities, labs, stations, simulations, and informational text. Every lesson ends with a closing discussion that summarizes new information learned; further, students complete an exit ticket as a check for understanding. As discussed in my assessment section of this portfolio, this exit ticket data helps me plan for next day instruction to clarify misconceptions, praise positive patterns, and perform individual student interventions as needed.

Weekly Lesson Plan

In addition to planning daily lessons, my short term planning involves lesson planning on a weekly basis. The template I utilize is a weekly lesson plan template. This allows me to understand where students need to advance over the course of the week in terms of their content learning. This structure further allows me to purposefully determine how lesson ideas, objectives, and student-led investigations build on one another and support student learning that is rigorous as well as heavily scaffolded. I create weekly lesson plans two weeks in advance. In this way, I can comprehend where students are headed in their learning and what daily and weekly interventions, activities, objectives, and assessments I must utilize to help them reach their goals.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

The 7th grade team works closely together in order to develop plans that emphasize holistic growth, problem-solving skills, literary strategies, mathematical tools, and historical context for students. This cross-disciplinary collaboration is evident in my daily and weekly lesson plans.

Planning in a way that builds both between and across disciplines ensures that the learning is meaningful to students and applicable in a variety of contexts. The instructional strategies section of my portfolio further demonstrates how my cross-disciplinary plans come to life in my classroom.

ELA, Math, and Social Studies cross-over

I purposefully include English and Language Arts (ELA) into my plans. Science represents an entirely new language for many students, especially since 7th grade is the first time students have the opportunity for a full science class. As such, I actively include ELA strategies in my plans, such as close reading and quick write skills. For example, in the lessons shared above, students learned the words "mass" and "volume" as they apply to our unit driving question, How can I make new stuff from old stuff? Students gain deeper understanding of these new words by using these words writing them in Do Now responses and scaffolded worksheets, orally, during Turn and Talks, and in close reading of informational texts. I emphasize the purposeful use of language and literacy in my classroom by planning for close reading and writing opportunities with informational text as well as frequent accountable talk opportunities, (such as Turn and Talks and Think, Write, Pair, Shares). These opportunities will be discussed in more detail in my instructional strategies section.

Providing the meaning and importance behind my purposeful plans means that I provide historical context for the significance of scientific work. Specifically, within my PowerPoints and videos with students, we discuss why scientists might want to understand the concepts we cover and what this information means for the future of science. This idea is particularly important with our unit on chemistry because chemistry has a major connection to the historical ramifications of plastic, air, and water pollution, the inventions of new drugs, and the technology boom.

In addition to other cross-disciplinary strategies, I collaborate and communicate to plan with the math teacher to incorporate mathematical skills and problem-solving into my science lesson plans to support every student in meeting rigorous learning goals. Specifically, students utilize quantitative data and record this data during every one of their labs. Student learning activities also involve taking measurements and employing graphing skills following labs and investigations. In this particular lesson cycle, students calculate, through several lab opportunities, density, mass, and volume using scientific tools including scales and graduated cylinders.

Supporting Every Student

In order to make sure that I support every student in achieving mastery on rigorous science content, I work to include strategies in my lesson plans that support all my learners through differentiation by process and product. Students are frequently allowed to differentiate by process. During independent work time to complete work, when searching for evidence to back up their responses, students are encouraged to use their notes, use their chromebooks, or utilize their peers for support. This differentiation by process supports students in reaching the same objectives as their peers, just in a different way. In addition to differentiation by process, I support students in my plans by allowing them to differentiate by the kinds of products they produce to demonstrate their learning. Based on student survey and anecdotal information, I know that my students are talented artists and many of them express themselves best through drawing. Additionally, many of my students are on lower reading levels. Thus, in order to help learners who prefer to draw their answers and to simultaneously support my lower readers, I allow students to draw, rather than write, many of their answers on scaffolded worksheets. This helps every student gain access to the same rigorous science content, while supporting every student in demonstrating their knowledge the best way possible. I will continue to utilize my knowledge of my learners and the content in order to create purposeful differentiated supports for all of my students.

Differentiation by Learning Style Example

I use my knowledge of learners to create opportunities for all of my students to excel. Specifically, as I have gotten to know my scholars better and analyzed their performance on different assignments, I have found that my students excel when given hands-on learning opportunities. Given that many of my students are tactile learners, I support them in gaining the intended content objectives through hands-on learning opportunities. In this week's lesson, on Wednesday, students had the chance to participate in a "Density Competition." Students worked collaboratively to predict and then test out which objects given to them would sink or float in vegetable oil. In this way, students learned more deeply about the topic of density, and I used my knowledge of learners to support them in reaching the objective about density.

See the Instructional Strategies section to learn more about how I create frequent opportunities to support my learners in Hands-On learning opportunities.

Knowledge of Learners and Community Context

I actively work to incorporate specific areas in my lesson plans for my learners to demonstrate their knowledge and background areas of expertise. My plans are based on student-led inquiry; students lead the learning by answering and generating their own questions at the start of the class, by investigating phenomena through labs and activities in the middle of class, and by drawing their own conclusions based on their own curation of evidence as they answer lab and activity questions. Students thus frequently draw from their own wealth of understanding in the lesson cycle. I work to support learners in drawing upon what they already know by frequently circulating the room and using probing, extension, and support questions. In addition, I work to build up students' confidence by supporting them in discovering connections between new concepts and what they already understand.

I work to continuously recognize learners' strengths and incorporate their backgrounds. For example, in the lesson for Monday of this week, the Do Now relates mass and volume to soccer balls because I know that many of my students play or are fans of soccer. Further, I know that many of my students are tactile learners who learn best by manipulating materials and through application to real world phenomena. Thus, in this same lesson, I include a demonstration for tactile learners to understand the differences between mass and volume. Additional strategies that build off of learners' strengths and contexts are included throughout my weekly lesson cycle.

References

Brain-targeted teaching: Hardiman, M. M. (2012). The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21^st Century Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.