Building, delivering and sustaining effective physical education programs [Section III Chapter 15 – Tannehill et al 2016]

Chapter 15

Designing unit and lesson plans for effective physical education

OVERALL CHAPTER OUTCOME

To design a unit plan and accompanying lesson plans to guide delivery of school physical education

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

  • To discuss reasons teachers plan
  • To distinguish between plan-dependent and plan-independent teachers
  • To encourage the practice of instructional alignment in planning unit and lesson plans
  • To outline a well-constructed generic unit plan
  • To consider a meaningful and realistic goal for a unit students will work towards successfully completing at the end of the unit (big picture goal)
  • To provide a matching and worthwhile big picture assessment to determine the extent to which students have successfully achieved the big picture goal
  • To explain the purpose of a content analysis including conducting appropriate procedural, hierarchical and tactical analyses
  • To design learning outcomes that match your big picture goal and big picture assessment
  • To consider formative assessments that provide continuous ongoing information and feedback about progress toward learning outcomes
  • To identify instructional model, learning experiences, and teaching strategies for each learning outcome
  • To consider the extent to which learning experiences can also act as formative assessments
  • To complete a considered unit plan
  • To outline a well-constructed lesson plan
  • To complete a considered lesson plan

Most students (perhaps over 90 percent) can master what we have to teach them, and it is the task of instruction to find the means which will enable our students to master the subject under consideration. Our basic task is to determine what we mean by mastery of the subject and to search for the methods and materials which will enable the largest proportion of our students to attain such mastery.- BENJAMIN BLOOM (1980)

This chapter forefronts designing unit and lesson plans and relies on previous chapters to provide in-depth engagement with the essential skills needed to complete unit and lesson plans (e.g., instructional strategies, refining and extending tasks). The focus of this chapter, which is planning units of instruction and associated lesson plans, was chosen for three reasons. First, many teachers consider planning for student learning to be their most important planning task. Many teachers work on a daily basis from their unit plan, rather than having individual daily lesson plans. Second, teachers who prefer to plan at the daily lesson level typically do so by planning all the daily lessons based on the unit plan. Thus, the unit again appears to be the most functional way to think about planning. Third, focusing on unit plans requires that you think about progressions that build across daily lessons and move toward the achievement of unit objectives. Even though a unit is taught to students through the daily lesson, it is the series of daily lessons (the unit) that should make sense as a whole.Box 16.1 defines a number of terms that will be revisited throughout the chapter related to designing and developing effective instruction in physical education.

Box 15.1: Planning and designing-related terms

Backward design: where curriculum design begins with the exit outcomes and proceeds backward to the entry point to ensure that all components are directly related to achieving the outcome

Curriculum plan: an overall view of alla teacher intends students to experience over a number of years (as part of their physical education experience)

Instructional alignment: When there is a match / consistency between learning goals, assessments that determine if students reach those goals, and the instructional practices that provide students the opportunity to achieve success

Lesson plan:related to the unit plan,what and how a teacher plans to deliver instruction and practice in a lesson

Plan-dependent teacher:one who invests a significant amount of time in planning effective units and associated lesson plans

Plan-independent teacher:one who works from mental recall of previous planning and experience with the activity being taught

Unit (unit of instruction) plan:related to the curriculum plan,what a teacher plans for a content area to achieve the learning goals, assessments and instruction in an aligned way over a number of weeks

WHY TEACHERS PLAN

Teachers devote time and attention to planning for instruction for a number of reasons (Clark & Yinger, 1979; Stroot & Morton, 1989);

1. To assure that a progression is followed both within and between lessons

Building, delivering and sustaining effective physical education programs [Section III Chapter 15 – Tannehill et al 2016]

2. To help the teacher stay on task and use time as planned

3. To reduce teacher anxiety and help him or her maintain confidence while teaching

In addition to these teacher-focused reasons it is important to acknowledge that student-focused reasons for teachers planning include assuring all students have an opportunity to learn and achieve success.

Not all teachers plan for all these reasons, nor do all these reasons influence teachers in the same way. Some school principals encourage teachers to leave their unit plans and block plans in a central space in the school in the event that, owing to illness or some unforeseen emergency, a substitute teacher may be required to teach the class in the short-term.

In their study of effective primary physical educators, Stroot and Morton (1989) found what many have noted from observing teachers work: Some teachers are very dependent on plans; others seem to be nearly independent of plans. They referred to these two extremes as plan-dependent and plan-independent teachers. For example, one teacher in their study said, "I would feel incredibly uncomfortable if I did not have them (plans), and I carry themaround on my clipboard everywhere I go" (Stroot & Morton, 1989, p. 219). Another teacher taped the daily plan on a wall of the gymnasium where it could be referred to easily if needed, even though observation indicated that the teacher seldom referred to it. Still other teachers go through an entire day's teaching without referring to plans, needing only to glance at them in the morning to remind themselves about what they intend to do in their classes that day. The difference between plan-dependent and plan-independent teachers seems to be one of personal comfort, reduction of anxiety about lessons, and maintaining confidence as the teaching is actually done. Remember, in this study, these were all effectiveteachers, so there is no suggestion here that plan-dependent teachers are more or less effective than plan-independent teachers. It seems a matter of personal style, although less-experienced teachers tend typically to be more plan-dependent. The plan-independent teachers do their work from mental recall of their previous planning and experience with the activity being taught.

The same study found, as have most others, that somewhere back in time all the effective teachers had worked hard to plan good units of instruction. The work they did when they initially planned units of instruction is similar to what will be presented in this chapter. Thus, no matter whether the teachers were, at the moment of the study, plan-dependent or plan-independent, they had all gone through extensive planning when initially developing units and they frequently upgraded and modified those initial plans based on their experiences teaching them. If the teachers perceived themselves to be in an activity unit in which their own background was "weak," they tended to become more plan-dependent than in those units where their own skills and experiences were stronger.

The problem of planning physical education units, especially when students are grouped by school year level, is that some students will be limited in what they are able to do while others will have the physical capacity,skills, and experience for higher-level instruction. Most teachers tend to plantheir units at, or just below, what they consider to be the average for theirclasses and then attempt to adjust the instructional task system so that itaccommodates students who vary markedly in their readiness for those tasks.Many of the instructional strategies described in Chapters 12, 13 and 14 arerelevant to meeting the needs of diverse learners within the same class, planning for all learners as opposed to the average learner.

Recalling from Chapter 8 that effective programs accomplish real goals, it makes sense to plan units so that ample time is provided for limited goal accomplishment. Teachers need to narrow their focus on what goods of physical education they wish to promote and pursue throughout a unit (Chapter 8). Many students will need a large number of successful repetitions to develop skills to the point where they can be used in applied settings. Repetitions of skill and strategy practice take class time, often more than planners are willing to allocate. Again, recalling from Chapter 12, it is through repeated cycles of refining and extending tasks that skill develops and the execution of strategy becomes reliable. This refining-extending cycle takes time, especially if all students are to get enough repetitions to be able to perform the skills and strategies in applied settings.

LEVELS OF PLANNING

Most physical education teachers will be involved in a number of different levels of planning, sometimes referred to as long-term (curriculum planning), medium-term (unit plan) and short-term (lesson plan).Curriculum planningis where a teacher plans for what they intend students to experience over a number of school years (e.g., primary and post-primary) as part of their physical education experience, and acts as a framework to determine the units to be taught. A unit plan, related to the curriculum plan,is what a teacher plans for a content area to achieve the learning goals, assessments and instruction in an aligned way over a number of weeks. Alesson plan,related to the unit plan,is what and how a teacher plans to deliver instruction and practice in a lesson. Well-planned and organized units and associated lessons have a greater chance of leading to student achievement of the intended learning. This chapter focuses on the unit and lesson level of planning both of which should be viewed as documents to guide your content and teaching, allowing flexibility to adapt each as you progress in your daily and weekly teaching of the associated content, in line with student needs and progress. As Metzler (2011) comments;

‘Planning serves to facilitate the transfer of content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) – the ability to teach effectively a specified content to a certain group of learners’ (p. 131).

Metzler (2011) also comments that having planned does not always mean a teacher is actually prepared and properly organized for effective instruction, pointing out that you can plan but not be prepared but if you are prepared, you have planned well enough.

Learning experience:

Contact a practicing physical education teacher and collect evidence of the sources they identify as informing and guiding their planning of physical education in their school. For example, a national syllabus, the school management, facilities and equipment, the areas of expertise of the physical education teacher(s), the student population? At what level of planning do such sources arise, i.e., curriculum, unit and / or lesson plan?

This chapter provides the reader with a proposed outline for a unit plan (see Box 15.2) before unpacking each element. There is no best way to actually write a unit plan. Eventually, teachers adopt formats that prove to be most useful for them in their daily teaching. Remember, it is the class lesson that gets taught to students. The unit plan, therefore, should be constructed using a format that provides the necessary guidance at the lesson level. The unit plan shared in this chapter focuses on providing an example appropriate for any curriculum model. Examples of unit plans specific to curriculum models are available in the ancillaries. Once the complete unit plan has been shared in this chapter, we will engage with planning and designing lesson plans. Before this, it is imperative that the reader understands two concepts, ‘backward design’ and‘instructional alignment’ that guide the design and planning of the unit.

Wiggins and McTighe (1998) encourage teachers to plan backwards from the ‘big ideas’ they want students to learn, design assessment tools that will demonstrate students having achieved success and choose teaching strategies to facilitate students reaching those big ideas. This is commonly referred to as backward design and constitutes considering;

  • What do we want students to know and be able to do as a result of participating in our programs? (Curriculum)
  • How will we know when they have been successful? (Assessment)
  • How can we get them there in the most challenging and engaging ways possible? (Instruction) (Lund & Tannehill, 2010)

For example, if the goal is to be a fair player during activity, assessment should be to demonstrate fair play in an activity setting and teaching should be learning what it means to be a fair player and practicing it with feedback. If the goal is to be physically active in class daily, assessment should be learners demonstrating daily physical activity and teaching should be providing challenging opportunities for learners to be physically active. Both examples constituteinstructional alignment where goals, assessment, teaching strategies and learning experiences are aligned, promoting richer learning for students.

A meaningful and coherent physical education program reflects an alignment between learning goals, assessments that determine if students reach those goals, and the instructional practices that provide students the opportunity to achieve success (Cohen, 1987; Lund & Tannehill, 2005). That is, demonstrate alignment between what students are intended to know and be able to do, the opportunities they receive to learn and practice, and how we assess for learning. The first piece of the instructional alignment triad is reflected in goals for student achievement; what it is that students will learn in physical education. The second piece of the triad is assessment; assessments that match the learning goal. We must determine what we want students to achieve (goal), and how they might demonstrate success. All learning does not have to be demonstrated in the same way. Just as all students learn differently, so do they demonstrate learning in varying ways. It is up to the teacher to provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their success, their mastery, their competence, and their level of achievement. The final piece of the triad is instruction and how instruction is designed to facilitate learning. It must be done intentionally, thoughtfully, creatively, and in an inviting and individually motivating way.

Box 15.2: Outline for a unit plan
  • Contextual description
  • Big Picture Goal
  • Big Picture Assessment
  • Concept Map
  • Learning Outcomes
  • Formative Assessments
  • Instruction – Instructional model; Learning experiences; Teaching strategies
  • Resources
  • Structure of Self-Appraisal
  • Preventive Management
  • Block Plan

DESIGNING A UNIT PLAN

This section will work through the elements of a unit plan proposed in Box 15.2. To enhance the readers understanding of how one element informs the next, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of instructional alignment, we have chosen to work through a specific unit plan related to Outdoor Education. The unit plan can be physically pieced together by the reader extracting in turn all the boxes titled as ‘Box Unit Plan’. In instances where some of the concepts related to an element require some further unpacking, we provide additional examples outside of the Outdoor Education unit plan. Such examples revert back to the practices of other chapters where they are noted in boxes denoted by the chapter number (e.g., 15.3, 15.4). This chapter strongly encourages the reader to complete each ‘learning task’ in sequence (denoted by ‘Learning Task 1’, ‘Learning Task 2’ … throughout the chapter), resulting in the reader completing, in the first instance, a unit plan and then a lesson plan by the end of the chapter.

Needs assessment and Contextual description

When beginning to plan a unit, the teacher (and students) should identify factors to be considered, from available equipment and the range of student ability, to prior learning, to understanding students' interest in the content and its relevance to them (i.e., a needs assessment). Once this is considered, it is imperative to provide demographics of the context in which the proposed unit plan is to be delivered.Such information includes the specific topic / area of study (e.g., athletics, dance) to be covered throughout the unit, the name and year of the class, the number of students in the class, the number of lessons, length of lessons and the rational for the topic. An example of such demographic information is provided in Box Unit Plan 1.