Lesson planning

A lesson plan is a teacher’s daily guide for what students need to learn, how it will be taught, and
how learning will be measured.

Lesson plans help teachers be more effective in the classroom by providing a detailed outline to
follow each class period.

This ensures every bit of class time is spent teaching new concepts and having meaningful
discussions — not figuring it out on the fly!

A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done
effectively during the class time. Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and
develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. Having a carefully constructed lesson
plan for each 3-hour lesson allows you to enter the classroom with more confidence and
maximizes your chance of having a meaningful learning experience with your students.

NEED OF LESSON PLANNING

 Road map of the instructions.
 Reflects the interests and needs of students.
 Content to be covered in a class is indicated in a lesson plan.
 Evaluation procedures are also included in the lesson plan.

Lesson planning is beneficial for the teacher in many ways; such as:
• It helps in achieving goals and objectives, and same can be said on the part of the students.
• It helps to get rid of problems or avoid them.
• It gives a reality check of everyday performance.
• It improves the habit and attitude of the students.
• It improves the teaching skills.
• It makes teaching ordinary and easy.
• It makes the teacher organized during teaching.
• Lesson planning determines when to include the interesting facts to attract the students’
attention.
• It enables the teacher to impart the things the students can do at the best of their abilities.

Process of lesson planning

Components of lesson plan:

Three key components before lesson planning

• Objectives for student learning

• Teaching/learning activities
• Strategies to check student understanding
Stages of lesson planning

 Pre-planning
 Designing a Lesson plan
 The Post-planning Stage

1. Pre-planning Stage

 What are my objectives for this class?

(These are the specific for particular class.)
Objectives are the statements of what the teacher wants students to learn.
 What are the objectives for this class? (emphasize exactly what the students should be
able to do, in a class/ on a paper/ in an exam )
 Why is this material important?
 What content will be covered in the particular class?
 What content needs to be conveyed?
 What will the students already know?
 What materials will be needed?

2. Designing a Lesson Plan

I. Introduction

 To warm up students,
 To ease students into the class
 And to give them a context for what they are about to learn
 II. Development

 Describe about teaching,

 “Instructional methods” such as, lectures, discussions, labs, collaborative learning, etc.

III. Conclusion

To ties students follow these activities

 Ask for questions

 Summarize the main points and explain how they relate to the course
 Next lesson ( relevance, links with next lesson for conceptual understanding)
 Recapitalize or a one-minute writing about the taught lesson

3. The Post-Planning Stage

 Let students work on problems you have given them,

 Or discuss issues and apply concepts
 can give you a good sense of what and how much they have learned.
 The one-minute writing about the lesson or homework problems can be similarly helpful.

Elements of a Lesson plan

The common style of lesson planning contains the following basic elements:
• 3-5 lesson objectives
• Content to be covered
• Activities (lecture, group work, problem-solving, etc.)
• Resources and materials needed (including technology)
• Timing
• Out of class work and assessment

Approaches/ Models of Lesson planning

1) Gagne’s frame work for instructional development,

2) Hunter’s seven steps of lesson planning and
3) The 5 E's lesson planning model

1) Gagne’s frame work for instructional development

A famous educational psychologist, Robert Gagne, identified nine instructional events that
support learning and that can be used in lesson planning. These points are often used as a
framework for instructional development by the teachers. Gagne’s frame work focus on the
acquisition of intellectual skills during
instruction. The nine events of instruction are:
i) Gaining attention:- Students attention is gained towards the lesson. There are many ways to
gain students’ attention; such as teacher links the lesson with the students’ previous knowledge,
start from the daily experiences of the students related to the lesson.

ii) Informing learners of the objective:- state the objectives of the lesson. Make the students
aware of what they are going to learn.

iii) Stimulating recall of prior learning:- in order to make link with the previous knowledge, the
teacher may asks questions to recall the prior learning.

iv) Presenting the content:- the teachers present the new concepts. Define and describe the details
of the concepts before the students.

v) Providing learning guidance:- the teachers use the audio and visual aids in order to create a
best learning environment.

vi) Providing opportunities to practice:- the teachers use examples from the daily life and provide
opportunities to revise/drill the new lesson. Sometimes the teachers give class work for the
improvement in learning.

vii) Providing feedback (information about how to improve):- the work assignments of the
students are checked by the teacher and comments are given. The students are asked to correct
the work.

viii) Assessing performance (exam, tests, papers):- the evaluation methods are used to check the
students’ performance on the learned concepts. The assessment of students’ progress can be
carried out by daily/monthly tests, examinations, etc.

ix) Enhancing retention and transfer:- the teacher organize activities to help students remember
and retain the learned concepts. The learned behavior of the student is confirmed when he/she
applies the knowledge on to different situations to solve other problems (transfer it to other
scenarios).
2) Madeline Hunter’s Seven Steps Lesson Plan

Hunter developed a seven steps model of lesson planning. These steps are associated with the
direct instruction method and behavior change practices. The seven steps fall under four
categories as follows:

i) Getting Students Ready to Learn

1.Review:- review of prior learning is necessary to make students ready to learn the new concept.

2. Protective Set:- focus attention, gain interest – knowledge and experiences of the students
about the new concept are assessed. The teacher connects the previous knowledge and
experience of the students to the new topic/concept.
3. Stating the objective:- most specifically the objectives of the lesson are stated by the teacher.

ii) Instruction

Input and modeling:- the teacher presents instructions to the class. He/she uses different modes
keeping in mind the students’ interests and abilities. Various examples from the daily life
experiences help students to grasp the new concepts.

1. Check for understanding:- students learn the lesson according to their own style of learning.
Teachers check students understanding in the middle and at the end of the lesson and decide
whether further clarification is required or not or which areas/points needs more clarification
either through teaching material or through different strategies. The teachers use class
assignments for this purpose

2. Guided practice (provide feedback without grading):- a teacher’s remark on students’ work is
very essential. It provides feed back to the students about their progress, learning and
weaknesses, areas where improvement is required.

iv) Independent Practice

Independent practice (usually for a graded assignment):- students’ learning of new concepts is
regularly checked through continues assessment; i.e. monthly tests, quarterly exams. The
teachers mark and give grades to their work.

3) 5 E’s of Lesson Planning

Learning theory of Constructivism states that learners construct new ideas or concepts on the
basis of their current/past knowledge. This model is based on the ideas of constructive learning.
Teachers design their instructions/ lessons around the learning objective, gather resources, and
provide students an opportunity to explore, build, and demonstrate their learning. It shifts the
learning environment from teacher-centered to learner-centered. The 5 E's Lesson Planning
Model is most often associated with constructivist learning design. It involves following 5 E’s:
• Engage - students come across the material, define their questions, do the basic work for their
class work, make connections between new and known ideas, identify the relevant practices from
their daily life.

• Explore - students directly involved with material, go through the learning process to solve the
problems. They work in a team to share the knowledge.

• Explain – the student gets an opportunity to explain the learned concepts such as discoveries,
processes, and ideas by written/ verbal assignments or through creative writing/ projects. The
teacher supplies material, books/ resources, gives feedback, enhances vocabulary, and clarifies
misconceptions/wrong points if any.

• Elaborate – the teachers can enhance students’ knowledge with the help of other examples and
expand their knowledge by explaining similar concepts, and asking them to apply it to other
situations. The learning of the new concepts also raises questions relating to other concepts (lead
to new inquiry).

• Evaluate – evaluation of learning is an on-going (continuous) process. Both teacher and learner
check the understanding of the concepts. Different evaluation techniques can be used such as
rubrics, checklists, teacher interviews, portfolios, problem-based learning outputs, and
assessments results. Results are used to evaluate the students’ progress and to modify
instructional needs in future.
COURSE AND UNIT PLANNING

Suggested steps in this process

Decide a topic
- Determine objectives
- Identify learning outcomes- (the desirable results)
- Determine assessment
- Design learning experiences and organize material- the content
- Develop evaluation mechanism-evaluation
- Information marketing-course description

Levels of Abstraction

In the 1950's Benjamin Bloom created taxonomy for categorising levels of thinking. The
taxonomy provides a useful structure in which to categorise learning outcomes and,
subsequently, assessment questions. Introductory courses, and some interest courses, may expect
to have outcomes at the initial levels of abstraction, whereas accredited and certified courses
would be expected to have more complex outcomes at higher levels of abstraction. The system
has been used widely across a variety of educational spheres since its inception.
In the 1990's, Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) revised the taxonomy with a view to making it
more relevant to the twenty-first century. The following table is listed in the order of the revised
taxonomy with the original categories.
Writing up Outcomes

 Outcomes can be written up in the following format:

 At the end of this course students should be able to:
 Define... Summarise... Demonstrate...Analyse...Critique... Integrate...

Discussion of Outcomes

Learning outcomes should be discussed with students. This ensures that you are both working
towards the same objectives and gives students an idea of what they can reasonably expect to
achieve over the course of a module.

Check of Understanding

Questions that might now be asked include:

• How do I determine if objectives/outcomes have been met?
• How will I be able to distinguish between those who really understand and those who don't?
• What would constitute sufficient and revealing evidence of understanding?
• Against what criteria do I measure achievement?
• If not formally assessing the course, how can I be sure that there is an evidence of learning?

Assessment

Questions you might address include:

• Are the learning outcomes assessable?
• What form of assignment would best assess the learning outcomes?
• Does the assessment capture the most important elements of my course?

Planning Content

• How can my material be organized best and presented so as to reach my proposed learning
outcomes?
• What do I need to consider about the type of learners with whom I work?
• How do adult learning styles impact on the way I present material?
• What teaching methodologies are most suitable for adult learners?
• How do I involve the learners as much as possible?
• How can I draw on the learner's own experience and knowledge.

Important Points
Course overview - can you give students a brief overview of what material is to be covered over
the duration of the course?
• Blocks of learning - what amount of material can be covered in a class?
• Sequencing of materials - how can the materials be sequenced in an order that is logical
/rational?
• Depth of material - what level is the course pitched at? How much detail do you need?
• Methodologies - what is the most appropriate methodology for a particular topic? Is there a mix
of methodologies planned?
• Group exercises - when and how often should group work be used?
• Worksheets/ notes -what support materials need to be developed? Would the use of problems or
case studies help with the overall understanding of the content?
• Resources - what books, tapes, etc. might be valuable for class use or as a resource for students
outside class?
• Field-trips - are there any activities that could be related to the course (visits to museums or
organizations) which would set the learning in a practical context?

Evaluation

Evaluation is the collection of feedback on a course to determine how the course content and
presentation has been received. Evaluation is essential in ensuring quality control. Feedback
received in this way provides information on the:

• Standards of the course

• Materials distributed
• Delivery methodologies used
• Nature of the group dynamics and tutor/learner rapport
• Ability of students to transfer/apply knowledge gained
Course Descriptions
 Course descriptions may be used by the learning provider for information and/or
marketing purposes.

DAILY AND WEELKY PLANNING

Daily and weekly planning are essential for the teachers. These create enough time for meeting
multiple responsibilities. The teacher can plan days and weeks carefully to include time for
teaching exercises, such as collecting and organizing material, writing questions, preparing class
assignments, and managing activities of different nature. This process allows creating a clear
path for teacher that maintains a healthy balance between teaching and preparation.

Strategies for daily and weekly planning

The following points demonstrate why planning is so critical to success.
• Planning can greatly reduce your stress quotient. Proper planning gives you the peace of mind
of knowing that you have formulated a feasible plan of action and that your goals are attainable.
• Planning also helps you to be prepared for obstacles because part of the planning process is
creating a emergency pan for unexpected problems.
• Planning serves as a way to evaluate your progress as you work. Planning your daily and
weekly activities will clearly illustrate whether or not you are staying on schedule.

5. STEPS IN LESSON PLANNING