Well Structured Lessons

About Well Structured Lessons

Well-structured lessons are a key proponent in the classroom. A well-structured lesson entails a beginning, a middle, and an end to a lesson. Most often this beginning is a “Do Now” or a “Problem of the Day”, but sometimes can be answering questions if it happens to be before a quiz or test. The middle is the main part of the lesson, which can be notes or an activity. The ending should have a closing or a summary of the lesson for the students. Lessons should have a performance task for the students to complete in order to let the teacher know if the students are grasping the material. The performance task demonstrates each student’s level of understanding, and if the student has gained mastery of an objective. One theory behind well-structured lessons is the backwards design process. The backwards design process impacts student learning because it helps ensure that all students can succeed in a class. Learning goals and assessment designs are completed first, which allows teachers to design their lessons with these in mind. The lessons are developed to help each student to learn and achieve the learning goal. Since lessons are designed with the student’s success in mind, it naturally puts the learner at the center of the design.

My Lesson Plans

Throughout my time at WRHS, my ability to create well-structured lessons fluctuated. In the beginning of my teaching practicum, I was strong in creating objectives for the lessons and material to supplement the learning goals, as well as writing a formal lesson plan. The quality of my lesson plans did not change over time, however, I did struggle to keep up with the formal lesson plans. Formal lesson plans include curriculum standards, aims, objectives, and instructional delivery methods as well as the learning activities. I would always have learning activity material prepared for the students, however, as the practicum and my classes at school picked up in pace, there were times when I could not have my formal lesson plans written on time. Formal lesson plans are important, as these ensure that your lesson meets the appropriate standards. I have grown to make sure that these are always completed on time.

To accommodate the different types of learners as I go through lessons, I make sure to verbally say what I am doing as well as write the specific steps down on the board. This helps the auditory and visual learners understand the material. Also, I have the students complete one or two example problems on their own during the notes so I can see if we need to do more problems together before moving on to individual practice (Appendix A: Sample Notes). Lastly, I post the notes on Google Classroom. Every student has access in case they missed class or missed a section of the notes.

In the beginning of my practicum at WRHS, my lesson plans were very traditional; I mainly completed notes at the board and had the students practice with worksheets (Appendix B: Sample Lesson Plan). Occasionally I would have them practice on the whiteboards as a different activity. My professional goal was to increase the different types of activities I did with my students to 2-3 per week. In order to do this, I gave my students a survey which asked for feedback about the types of activities they like to do as well as their feedback on the pace of the class (Read more about the survey in Reflective Practice). From the survey, I was given more types of activities to incorporate into my lesson plans.