Stage 3: Instructional Planning

“Do not give your pupil any

verbal lessons; he ought to
receive them only from
experience”
 What are the most important parts of a
lesson?
1. Engaging “hook” 8. Indirect instruction
2. Formative assessment 9. Active learning activities
3. Differentiation 10. Choice
4. Opportunities for collaboration 11. Clear expectations
5. Classroom management 12. Coffee (for teachers)
6. A clear objective 13. Behavior management
7. Direct instruction
Who has the best education system
 Starting a lesson (the hook)

• Kids need to be engaged in the learning process

• This can be the form of engaging them with an open ended question, getting them to work
collaboratively, or a novel task
 Sticky note response
• Works for all subjects, though differently
• Discussions with a spectrum: “Gun use is an unalienable right of all citizens” “Social Media is
responsible for rising narcissism”
A C

B D
 In your group

How do you prefer to start a lesson? What has worked well?

What hasn’t worked well?
 Active learning

• Active learning is commonly defined as activities that students

do to construct knowledge and understanding.
• The activities vary but require students to do higher order
thinking.
• Metacognition—students’ thinking about their own learning—is
an important element, providing the link between activity and
learning.
 Acquire Meaning Making Transfer

The goal is to support

The goal is to help students
Learning The goal is to acquire factual students transfer of
construct meaning of important
Goals information and/or basic skills learning to new contexts
ideas and processes
and situations
Teacher’s role is to engage learners
and guide their inquiry to complex The teacher’s role is to
Teacher’s primary role is to inform
problems, texts, projects, cases, or establish clear performance
learner through direct/explicit
simulations goals, supervise, provide
instruction
Strategies include: models and give feedback.
Strategies include:
Teacher role/ •Using analogies • Authentic assessments
• Lecture
instructional •Graphic organizers • Conferencing
• Graphic organizers
strategies • Demonstration/modeling •Divergent questioning • Providing feedback in
•Inquiry approaches context of authentic
• Convergent questioning
•PBL application
• Guided practice
•Socratic Seminar • Prompting self
• Feedback, corrections
•Reciprocal Teaching assessment and reflection
•Rethinking and reflection prompts
Acquisition Make
Meaning
Understanding for
learning

Transfer
Goal: Internalization and broadening of
knowledge and skill Make for
Make
Understanding
Transfer
Meaning
Meaning
learning

Receive, encounter

Practice,
reinforce,
extend

Acquisition Try out

Refine,
relearn as
needed

Get feedback
 Goal: Learner-made connections, deepening
understanding by developing and “testing” ideas Understanding for
Acquisition
Transfer
learning
Probing and analysis evoked
Current understanding is challenged

Ideas Hypothesis
evaluated Make Meaning
generation
Goal: Autonomy and performance in complex
and novel situations on “worthy” Make
Understanding
Acquisition
Meaning
learning
for

Apply

Adjust Transfer Get feedback

Evaluate
Acquisition Make
Meaning
Understanding for
learning

Transfer
•A=Acquisition
•B=Meaning making
•C=Transfer
•D=None of the above
✦ (Meaning) ✦ Discuss: Real world vs. Euclid’s world - in the 3D physical world,
what assumptions (axioms) must differ? Students respond to some
prompts e.g.:
✦ In our school, the shortest distance between any classroom and
the main door is…
✦ In flying long distances, the shortest distance between cities in 2
different countries is..
✦ (Acquire) ✦ Teacher describes spherical and “taxicab” geometry as
alternatives, and students read the chapter on other geometries
from the textbook
✦ (Meaning)
✦ KWL: What do you want to/need to know about this topic?
✦ (Transfer)
✦ Write a guidebook for the geometry of your school
✦ (Meaning) ✦ Evaluate what we learned and what questions we still have about
the text and the issue - KWLQ
 Challenge current understandings Make
in various ways: Meaning

1.Provide additional information that might ultimately confirm or

requires a student to extend the contradict)
tentative understanding (broaden and
4.Add complexity to the issue (deepen,
confirm)
likely confirming some pieces and
2.Provide conflicting information contradicting others)
(contradiction, requiring re-thinking)
5.Compare this understanding to
3.Propose an alternative understanding previous understandings about
(challenge, requiring consideration of related issues (connect and
the same problem in a new light; synthesize)
 Challenge current understandings Make
in various ways: Meaning

1.Provide a problem that cannot be solved with a naïve understanding

(contradict and create the need for an alternative understanding)
2.Require a defense (student examines underpinnings of understanding,
considering evidence)
3.Introduce a different perspective that must be accounted for
4.Test the understanding against a new problem (may confirm, contradict, or
require adjustment)
 These learner questions need to be Make
evoked ‘by design’, not by the teacher: Meaning

•What’s going on here? •What are the key facts?

•What is this about? What’s the evidence?
•What should I make of this? •What questions does this
raise?
•What is problematic here?
•What is significant here?
•What is causing that?
 These learner questions need to
become autonomous
Transfer

•What’s going on here? •What are the key facts?

•What is this about? What’s the evidence?
•What should I make of this? •What questions does this
raise?
•What is problematic here?
•What is significant here?
•What is causing that?
• How do our eyes detect color?
• Direct instruction on the parts of our eyes
related to color (cones, rods, basal
ganglia, etc)
• What color is this?
• Provide a series of optical illusions for
them to generate questions about the
how color is processed
 Ending the lesson

How do you all typically end your lessons?

 White boards

• We have a bunch of them

• The problem: bulky
• Solution: Page protectors
Plickers
 3 way summaries

• 75 Words
• 50 Words
• 25 Words
 By Tuesday morning

• You should have Stage 1 and 2 • A lesson plan for one lesson
ready of your first unit plan during the first two weeks
• Talk to me and/or your HoDs • Not the first day
over the next few days. I’m • The lesson plan should indicate
available all weekend. I’ll also acquisition, meaning making,
be here on Monday and transfer
Project 2061 rated all popular middle-school science books as “unsatisfactory,” and
criticized them as “full of disconnected facts that neither educate nor motivate”
students. Not one of the 10 widely used high-school biology texts was deemed
worthy of a high rating in the rigorous evaluation.
The in-depth study found that most textbooks cover too many topics and don’t
develop any of them well. All texts include many classroom activities that either are
irrelevant to learning key science ideas or don’t help students relate what they are
doing to the underlying ideas.
 Writing objectives

• Kids need to know what is expected of them… but it doesn’t necessarily mean starting with the
objective on the board
• Sometimes classes just don’t go the way you intended…and that can be entirely ok
• Sometimes you do things not for guaranteed results, but for important experiences
• Sometimes it spoils the journey
• Students need to be engaged first