Five Common Mistakes in Writing Lesson Plans (and how to avoid them )
Dr. Bob Kizlik
http://www.adprima.com/mistakes.htm
THE LESSON PLAN
1. Preliminary Information
The development of a lesson plan begins somewhere, and a good place to start is with a list or description of general information about the plan. This information sets the boundaries or limits of the plan. Here is a good list of these information items: (a) the grade level of the students for whom the plan is intended; (b) the specific subject matter (mathematics, reading, language arts, science, social studies, etc.); (c) if appropriate, the name of the unit of which the lesson is a part; and (d) the name of the teacher.
2. The Parts
Each part of a lesson plan should fulfill some purpose in communicating the specific content, the objective, the learning prerequisites, what will happen, the sequence of student and teacher activities, the materials required, and the actual assessment procedures. Taken together, these parts constitute an end (the objective), the means (what will happen and the student and teacher activities), and an input (information about students and necessary resources). At the conclusion of a lesson, the assessment tells the teacher how well students actually attained the objective.
In a diagram, the process looks something like this:
Input ======>process=====>output
Let's look at each part separately.
Input: This part refers to the physical materials, other resources, and information that will be required by the process. What are these inputs? First of all, if you have thought about what the lesson is supposed to accomplish, the inputs are much easier to describe. In general categories, inputs consist of:
1. Information about the students for whom the lesson is intended. This information includes, but is not limited to the age and grade level of the students, and what they already know about what you want them to learn.
2. Information about the amount of time you estimate it will take to implement the lesson.
3. Descriptions of the materials that will be required by the lesson, and at some point, the actual possession of the materials.
4. Information about how you will acquire the physical materials required.
5. Information about how to obtain any special permissions and schedules required. For example if your lesson plan will require a field trip, you must know how to organize it. If your lesson will require a guest speaker (fire chief, lawyer, police officer, etc.) you must know how to make arrangements for having that person be at the right place at the right time.
Process
This is the actual plan. If you have done the preliminary work (thinking, describing the inputs), creating the plan is relatively easy. There are a number of questions you must answer in the creating the plan:
1. What are the inputs? This means you have the information (content description, student characteristics, list of materials, prerequisites, time estimates, etc.) necessary to begin the plan.
2. What is the output? This means a description of what the students are supposed to learn.
3. What do I do? This means a description of the instructional activities you will use.
4. What do the students do? This means a description of what the students will do during the lesson.
5. How will the learning be measured? This means a description of the assessment procedure at the end of the lesson. For a short discourse on how to write an assessment, click here.
As an example, here is a template that I have used successfully to teach students to write lesson plans:
Lesson Plan Format:
Teacher______Subject______
Grade Level______Date______
I. Content: This is a statement that relates to the subject-matter content. The content may be a concept or a skill. Phrase this as follows: I want my students to: (be able to [name the skill]) OR (I want my students to understand [a description of the concept]). Often times, this content is predetermined or strongly suggested by the specific curriculum you are implementing through your teaching.
II. Prerequisites: Indicate what the student must already know or be able to do in order to be successful with this lesson. (You would want to list one or two specific behaviors necessary to begin this lesson). Some research indicates that up to 70% of what a student learns is dependent on his or her possessing the appropriate prerequisites.
III. Instructional Objective: Indicate what is to be learned - this must be a complete objective. Write this objective in terms of what an individual student will do, not what a group will do. Limit your objective to one behavioral verb. The verb you choose must come from the list of defined behavioral verbs on my web site. Make sure your objective relates to the content statement above.
IV. Instructional Procedures: Description of what you will do in teaching the lesson, and, as appropriate, includes a description of how you will introduce the lesson to the students, what actual instructional techniques you will use, and how you will bring closure to the lesson. Include what specific things students will actually do during the lesson. In most cases, you will provide some sort of summary for the students.
V. Materials and Equipment: List all materials and equipment to be used by both the teacher and learner and how they will be used..
VI. Assessment/Evaluation: Describe how you will determine the extent to which students have attained the instructional objective. Be sure this part is directly connected to the behavior called for in the instructional objective.
VII. Follow-up Activities: Indicate how other activities/materials will be used to reinforce and extend this lesson. Include homework, assignments, and projects.
VIII. Self-Assessment (to be completed after the lesson is presented): Address the major components of the lesson plan, focusing on both the strengths, and areas of needed improvement. Determine here how you plan to collect information that will be useful for planning future lessons. A good idea is to analyze the difference between what you wanted (the objective) and what was attained (the results of the assessment).
Of course, there is an immense difference between being able to plan and actually being able to carry out the plan. However, if you have thought carefully about where you are going before you begin writing your plan, the chances of your success, as well as the success of your students, are much greater.
Mager's Tips on Instructional Objectives
http://www.gsu.edu/~mstmbs/CrsTools/Magerobj.html
REASONS FOR STATING OBJECTIVES
1. When clearly defined objectives are lacking, there is no sound basis for the selection or designing of instructional materials, content, or methods. If you don't know where you are going, it is difficult to select a suitable means for getting there.
2. A second important reason for stating objectives sharply has to do with finding out whether the objective has, in fact, been accomplished. Test or examination s are the mileposts along the road of learning and are supposed to tell instructors AND students whether they have been successful in achieving the course objectives. But unless objectives are stated clearly and are fixed in the minds of both parties, tests are at best misleading; at worst, they are irrelevant, unfair, or uninformative. Test items designed to measure whether important instructional outcomes have been accomplished can be selected or created intelligently only when those instructional outcomes have been made explicit.
3. A third advantage of clearly defined objectives is that they provide students with a means to organize their own efforts toward accomplishment of those objectives. Experience has shown that with clear objectives in view, students at all levels are better able to decide what activities on their part will help them get to where it is important for them to go.
THE QUALITIES OF USEFUL OBJECTIVES:
Useful objectives contain and Audience, Behavior (performance), a Condition, and a Degree (criterion).
Behavior / An objective always says what a learner is expected to be able to do. The objective sometimes describes the product or result of the doing.
Ask yourself, what is the learner doing when demonstrating achievement of the objective?
Condition / An objective always describes the important conditions (if any) under which the performance is to occur.
Degree / Wherever possible, an objective describes the criterion of acceptable performance by describing how well the learner must perform in order to be considered acceptable.
http://www.okbu.edu/academics/natsci/ed/398/objectives.htm
Three components of an instructional objective:
Identify the type of activity in which competence is required (e.g., "Dissect...").
List any conditions or circumstances required for students to meet the objective (e.g., "...given two class periods working with the materials at your lab station
Specify the criteria or standards by which competence in the activity will be assessed (e.g., "a frog so that the following organs are clearly displayed...").
Examples of Well-written Objectives http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/b/x/bxb11/Objectives/
Audience - Italics
Behavior - Underlined
Condition - Bold
Degree - regular
Psychomotor - "Given a standard balance beam raised to a standard height, the student (attired in standard balance beam usage attire) will be able to walk the entire length of the balance beam (from one end to the other) steadily, without falling off, and within a six second time span."
Cognitive (comprehension level) - "Given examples and non-examples of constructivist activities in a college classroom, the student will be able to accurately identify the constructivist examples and explain why each example is or isn't a constructivist activity in 20 words or less."
Cognitive (application level) - "Given a sentence written in the past or present tense, the student will be able to re-write the sentence in future tense with no errors in tense or tense contradiction (i.e., I will see her yesterday.)."
Cognitive (problem solving/synthesis level) - "Given two cartoon characters of the student's choice, the student will be able to list five major personality traits of each of the two characters, combine these traits (either by melding traits together, multiplying together complimentary traits, or negating opposing traits) into a composite character, and develop a short (no more than 20 frames) storyboard for a cartoon that illustrates three to five of the major personality traits of the composite character."
Affective - "Given the opportunity to work in a team with several people of different races, the student will demonstrate an positive increase in attitude towards non-discrimination of race, as measured by a checklist utilized/completed by non-team members."
If you're paying attention here, you'll notice two things:
· As you move up the "cognitive ladder," it become increasingly difficult to precisely specify the degree.
· Affective objectives are the hardest objectives for most people to write and assess. They deal almost exclusively with internal feelings and conditions that can only be artificially observed externally.
· The verbs you use to describe the overt, measurable activity can be tricky to write. Fortunately Blooms' Taxonomy exists to assist you.