Why we use lesson plans - ANSWERLesson planning is at the heart of effective teaching. Whether you have days or decades of teaching experience, lesson planning can enhance your impact!
by Dr Lincoln Gomes and Georgie Lowe
1.TO PRODUCE UNIFIED LESSONS
Enables multiple teachers in a course to pr...
Why we use lesson plans - ANSWERLesson planning is at the heart of effective teaching. Whether
you have days or decades of teaching experience, lesson planning can enhance your impact!
by Dr Lincoln Gomes and Georgie Lowe
1.TO PRODUCE UNIFIED LESSONS
Enables multiple teachers in a course to provide a consistent delivery and message to all students.
2.TO FOCUS ON WHAT STUDENTS ARE DOING
Provides an opportunity for teachers to think about the types of activities needed to meet the
learning outcomes, how long the activities take and how students will be grouped.
3.TO MAKE THE LEARNING JOURNEY EXPLICIT
Provides an opportunity to identify and make explicit to learners, links within course content.
4.TO REFLECT ON ONE'S OWN CONTENT KNOWLEDGE
Enables the teacher to evaluate their own knowledge of the content to be taught.
5.TO IMPROVE TEACHER CONFIDENCE
Enables the teacher to remain in control of their lesson, and keep students on track.
6.TO MAKE IT EASIER TO SHARE PRACTICE
Enables other teachers to understand how your lessons are sequenced. This is especially important
when someone else is filling in for your lesson.
7.TO CREATE A RECORD
Serves as evidence of professional performance, and a record of how your pedagogy evolves over
time. At the end of the teaching period, it can be motivating to lookover your records and see the
impact you've had.
8.TO PROMPT CONTINUING SELF-REFLECTION
Provides a framework for you to reflect on your teaching practice and make adjustments.
identify essential questions/big ideas - ANSWERThe Big Ideas are the broad, overarching themes of a
unit. If they are presented in the form of questions, they may be known as essential questions. The
Big Ideas are the key concepts that you want students to internalize and take away from the lesson.
Rick Chambers - planning the lesson - ANSWERHello, I'm Rick Chambers. I've been one of the writers
for this section on Unit 4. Let's talk about essential questions. American educators Jay McTighe,
,Grant Wiggins, Jeff Wilhelm and others have stressed the importance over the last ten years of
essential questions. These are the questions that are going to catch students' interest. You've read
the objectives for the lesson that are in the curriculum guide or syllabus, but they're usually written
in language that teachers understand, at least most of the time, but not that students will
immediately catch on to. So the teacher has to take the formal objectives and put them in terms that
will ignite kids' interest. These are the big ideas, the key concepts, that by the end of the unit you
want the students to have internalized and integrated into their memory banks.
For instance, if the objective in grade seven science is something like "students will recognize that in
order to make an informed decision about environmental issues, scientific knowledge and
exploration are involved," you need to make that more relevant and immediate for your kids. Begin
by showing students one of those famous pictures of a polar bear floating in a tiny chunk of ice in the
Arctic. Is this animal's dismal fate the result of climate change? When we ask "what effect does
climate change have on Arctic animals?" we have an essential question that addresses the objective.
You have to have scientific knowledge and exploration to give an informed answer. So that, kids, is
what we're going to be doing for the next three weeks. Essential questions help to motivate students
and to show them where they're going with this unit of study. The question should also feature
somewhere in the culminating assessment where the students will demonstrate what they've
learned.
practice linking concepts - ANSWERExplicitly linking new concepts to students' background
experience or prior knowledge provides a bridge between the familiar and unfamiliar.
Linking older, known concepts to new ideas will help your students' comprehension and comfort
levels.
create a culminating task - ANSWERAssigning a culminating task is a common way to assess whether
or not the content and language objectives have been met. The culminating task is the final activity
in a lesson sequence.
Choice Boards are one example.
Threats to Biodiversity:
1. Create a dramatization illustrating one major threat to biodiversity.
2. Create a radio or television commercial about one major threat to biodiversity.
3. Create a slide show or a digital story that illustrates one major threat to biodiversity.
4. Interview a member of an environmental organization about one major threat to biodiversity. Film
or present a summary of that interview.
diagnostic assessment - ANSWERDiagnostic assessments provide information about what the
students already know and don't know about a topic.
, formative assessment - ANSWERFormative assessments are often informal in nature and involve
giving feedback to the students. This gives the students some direction regarding how to improve.
summative assessment - ANSWERSummative assessments evaluate what the students have learned.
These are often the final test, assignment, or exam.
planning decisions - ANSWERGiven this situation, what are three or four planning decisions that you
would make to prepare lessons for this class? Consider using some of the following headings as you
organize your planning decisions:
- Linking to students' background knowledge
- Identifying the big idea that will be explored
- Identifying language needs
- Deciding on the time allotment needed for all the lesson(s)
- Identifying learning activities
- Deciding on a culminating task
- Acquiring supplementary resources
identify language features and needs - ANSWERSome questions to consider here include:
What grammar points will be covered in this lesson? How can these be integrated into authentic
communicative tasks?
Which reading, speaking, listening, writing skills will the learners be working on?
Is there a pronunciation component? How will this be presented?
What is the key vocabulary for this lesson, including subject-specific vocabulary?
include a balance of opportunities - ANSWERWhen planning your lessons, ensure there is a balance
of opportunities for students to listen, speak, read, and write.
Include a variety of learning opportunities/activities:
1. Listening to teacher presentations and student commentary.
2. Speaking in group situations and to the whole class.
3. Extensive reading, reading for immediate use, and for future preparation.
4. Writing to practice new genres, writing to think and process new information, writing to
demonstrate learning.
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