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The Elements of an Exemplary Lesson Plan
The Elements of an Exemplary Lesson Plan
Engaging Lessons
Challenging and measurable objectives
Appropriate student engagement strategies
Appropriate pacing, sequence, and activities
Grouping to attend to every students needs
A well structured lesson plan is necessary for an effective, engaging, and efficient classroom. Without a thoroughly thought out lesson plan, the impact is jeopardized because lack of forethought into the delivery modes and interaction can lead to information and time being lost. When the lesson is structured and intentionally planned, then more of the educators energy during class time is available to make the information accessible, adapt to students needs, and create and engaging environment.
DESE Proficiency Standard
DESE Proficiency Standard
"Adapts as needed and implements standards-based units comprised of well-structured lessons with challenging tasks and measurable outcomes; appropriate student engagement strategies, pacing, sequence, , resources, and grouping; purposeful questioning; and strategic use of technology and digital media; such that students are able to learn the knowledge and skills defined in state standards/local curricula."
Structure of a Lesson
Structure of a Lesson
In each lesson I created, I ensured that there was a beginning, middle, and end. When students walked into the room, there were always clear and direct instruction prepared on the board so there was no wait time in starting class. The warm ups or "Bellringers" were structured to achieve either two things: allow students to review material from the last class or prompts students to think about material that will be learned in the upcoming class. The middle of a lesson can consist of a variety or aspects, but it is the overall major element of the lesson in which students are actively learning and engage with the content. This section can include any combination of lectures, demonstrations, labs, hand-on activities, and student exploration. The last part of a lesson is the end which is focused on reflection and review. Students are provided with exit tickets that could include a variety of conclusion questions, review of material, and learning extension prompts. The exit tickets and associated discussion create space for a final debrief of the lesson, allowing students to take a moment to reflect on what they learned, practice retrieving the information, and asking any questions they needed to. Once a student has reached the end of a lesson, they should have knowledge of the purpose of the lesson and an understanding of the information they were supposed to learn.
Battle of the Beaks
Battle of the Beaks
This lesson was my first larger scale activity that I created. It was a lesson centered around natural selection. Each student represented a bird, and they each had to use different types of beaks (binder clips, spoons, tweezers, etc) to try to pick up food (beads). They had to eat a specific amount to live, and if they did not they died. If they died, they would have to select a type of beak that had survived the round. This activity taught me a lot about how to present the steps of an activity. In each class that I did this lesson I was able to add more steps and structure to scaffold the students learning and streamline the set up.
This activity not only provided students with an opportunity to have fun in class, but also gave them a visual and hands-on demonstration of evolution, which they were struggling to understand. Once this activity was completed, conclusion questions and discussion followed. Every student was able to actively participate and answer questions correctly. This showed that the activity had significant educational value because every student was able to summarize, analyze, and explain the concept of natural selection.
Biome Bottles
Biome Bottles
A long term project I developed was Bottle Biology. I created this project for our two week evolution unit. The goal of the project was to make observations about and explain an ecosystem. In addition to this, I developed materials that incorporated the scientific method into this activity. Each student was able to practice using scientific questions, writing a hypothesis, following a methods section, collecting data, and writing conclusions. This project challenged my students to explore the scientific method and practice working in teams.
Repetition and Summarization
Repetition and Summarization
One of the most used methods of learning that I implemented was summarization and repitition. Through out a lesson I would ask questions such as:
"Can someone remind us what this concept is?"
"If you had to explain this to your best friend, how would you do that?"
"Can you restate in your own words what we just learned?"
Another strategy I implemented was call and response. Often in biology, there are difficult words to pronounce or an order of steps to remember. To help student better grasp these concepts, I would have them repeat words after me. Examples of this are:
I would say a word then have them say it back when I pointed to the class
Have them say an answer together on the count of three
Have them say a word or phrase three times in a row
Universal Backwards Design
Universal Backwards Design
There are multiple aspects to what constitutes a good lesson plan. In the Universal Backwards Design method it is recommended to begin lesson planning from an objective. These objectives are the desired outcomes of a lesson which a teacher wants the students to achieve. Examples of this are goals that center around the use of concrete measures such as students being able to explain, identify, draw, solve, or ask questions. These objectives come from the Massachusetts State Frameworks which guide the material that needs to be taught and what level of depth students are expected to understand. When starting with an objective, the next step is to ask the question, "how will I get my students to achieve this goal?". Through this question and process, lesson planning becomes a practice in creating and understanding all of the different ways your students learn best, and how to incorporate those strategies to ensure that each student is able to access the lesson. When starting at the desired outcome of a lesson, it gives the educator the opportunity to develop plans that put the students at the center of the learning because it is no longer a question about how the teacher will interact and share material, but how the lessons will set students up for success in the content area.
Clear Learning Goals and Objectives
Clear Learning Goals and Objectives
At the beginning of each lesson I had the learning objectives on the board and would say to the students, "today our goal is ..." or "the plan for today is...". These phrases not only oriented students to the schedule of the class, but gave them a transition into understanding what they will be learning.
Assessment of Learning
Assessment of Learning
Another important aspect to lesson planning is building in opportunities to assess student learning. Performance tasks should be incorporated into multiple different sections of a lesson to gauge and interpret the class's understanding of the content. I heavily relied on informal assessments to direct the pacing of my lessons. Through the use of Pear Deck I was able to ask students to rate their understanding, ask them to summarize what we learned, and have them anonymously ask questions that they may be too intimidated to ask out loud. Additionally, I used methods such as having students show me a "thumbs up, middle, or down" to quickly see how they felt about something I had just explained. Performance tasks such as unit tests that were given at the end of either a one or two week unit, were used in order to formally assess understanding. These tests were modeled after the MCAS test to provide students the ability to practice for this test and simulate that style of questions. The data gathered from these tests was analyzed to determine which concepts the class may have struggled with, which was then included in later reviews. Through informal questions during class, student self assessment, and formal testing I was able to interpret each student's overall mastery of each learning objective.
Direct and Concrete Instruction
Direct and Concrete Instruction
Throughout each lesson, I took care to ensure that the learning goal and content was being taught in a clear and straight forward manner. Even when having discovery or question based learning, I would make sure that I would directly restate the information so that everyone in the class was on the same page. This element was incredibly important for ensuring that I was reaching the needs of all my students and that no one was getting lost in the material.
Managing Talking and Transitions
Managing Talking and Transitions
In the beginning of my teaching I found it difficult to manage transitions and talking in class. I did not know what strategies to implement that would be genuine and effective. As I became more comfortable with the class, I developed consistent styles and patterns of this type of classroom management which I was able to embed in my lesson planning.
My class initially was struggling with the transition between bell-work and moving into class time. To address this, I found that multiple reminders such as "I need to see everyone in the Pear Deck working on this problem", "I will give you all one more minute to finish this question", and "You have 30 seconds to get ready before we will start _____". This greatly helped improve the class's ability to shift focus because they were able to have time to prepare for a transition, rather than having to immediately change what they were doing. On days when I knew there were tasks that would be especially difficult to shift from, I started sharing a timer on the projector screen. I would give the class verbal reminders to check the clock as well. By having this visual on the board, students knew when the time would end for each work session, and they were able to mentally prepare.
Another difficulty I had in the beginning was figuring out the best ways to get students into groupings for larger group work. The first time I did group work, I let the students select their own groups. This took away a significant amount of learning time, and resulted in the groups being less productive because of excess talking. After this, I started to create strategic groupings in my lesson planning. Some days it was randomized groups that were preplanned, whereas others were based off of their assigned seating, and who was near each other. For larger activities I would create the groups ahead of time based on the skills I knew each student excelled and struggled with, trying to create pairings that would support each other, and avoiding putting students together that I knew would get too distracted.
Student Choice
Student Choice
An element of lesson planning that I tried to include as much as possible was student choice. Giving students the opportunity to engage with the material in a way that is interesting and beneficial to them can be more effective than telling them exactly what is required to complete. Letting students learn about what they are most interested in allows them to connect to the content in a more engaging and memorable method. In one particular lesson, I provided students with the choice between three different articles to read and answer questions about evolution. By providing them the choice of what type of situation and animal they wanted to learn about rather than providing only one option, the students were more engaged and were willing to share about what they had read to the class. Below are the three article options I had provided.
ant_article (1).pdfvoles_article (1).pdfdragonfly_article (1).pdf
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