Even if you had plenty of practice writing lessons during your teacher
training, it's hard to be prepared for the avalanche of lesson planning
you'll have to do once your first year of teaching begins.
To rev up the learning curve, here are eight questions to "think aloud"
as you prepare lessons. The answers will help you create high-quality,
on-target plans.
At the beginning of the year, you'll probably refer to the questions
frequently, but after several months of planning, you'll be a whiz. The
process will become automatic!
Eight Questions to "Think Aloud" as You Prepare Lessons
1. Students: What are the academic, social, physical, personal, and
emotional needs of my students?
2. Strategies: Which teaching strategies will best facilitate my
students' learning?
3. Grouping: Should I group heterogeneously or homogeneously?
What size should my groups be?
4. Timing: When is the best time to do this lesson? Are there
prerequisites my students should have mastered?
5. Materials: What materials and human resources do I need for the
lesson to be successful?
6. Success: Was the lesson successful? Were my students
interested? Did my students learn? What didn't work? What will I
do differently next time?
7. Sequence: What can I do next to build upon this lesson? How
can I make it flow?
8. Rationale: What is the reason for doing this? What objectives will
be accomplished?
The Secrets of Daily Lesson Planning
Your daily lesson plans should detail the specific activities and
content you will teach during a particular week. They usually include:
Lesson objectives
Procedures for delivering instruction
Methods of assessing your students
Student groupings
Materials needed to carry out the lesson plan
As with all planning, the format of lesson plans will vary from school to
school. Many school districts provide lesson-plan books, while others
allow teachers to develop their own format. Regardless of the format,
here are the key components of successful lesson planning:
Your lessons should be readable and detailed enough that
a substitute teacher could teach from them in an emergency.
Consider making a copy or two of each week's plan. I used to
take one copy home and place others at key areas in my
classroom so I could leave my actual lesson-plan book on my
desk at all times, available for the principal. This also allowed me
to work at home on preparing materials for upcoming lessons and
on planning for the following week without fear of misplacing my
lesson book!
Try scripting your lessons. It was time-consuming, but in my first
few years of teaching, it helped me be better organized and more
confident in front of my students.
As a general rule, begin working on plans for the next week no
later than Thursday. By then you will have an idea of which
lessons weren't completed, the objectives that need to be
reinforced, and which upcoming school-wide activities need to be
integrated into your plan. If you leave the planning until Friday
after school, it may not get done!
Make a master copy or template of the planning pages you use,
and write or type those activities that stay the same each week
and the times they occur. Make several copies of the new page
to replace the blank lesson-plan pages, but don't copy them too
far in advance, in case you change your weekly schedule. Then
just fill in the blanks on the copies with specifics for the week.
Balance grouping strategies and activities in each learning
style or multiple intelligence type so you are meeting the needs
of all your students.
Check with your principal for guidelines on when he or she will
want to look at your lesson plans. Some principals make a point
of viewing new teachers' lesson plans on a weekly basis so they
can provide on-the-spot assistance throughout the school year.
This article was adapted from The New Teacher's Complete
Sourcebook: Grades K–4 by Bonnie P. Murray (© 2002, Scholastic).
