The Research
There are a lot of different facets that go into lesson planning. The first thing that goes into lesson planning is the opening. The teacher needs to figure out what the students are going to learn, the significance of the material, how it builds on what they already learned, and what are they going to do. "An effective lesson opening communicates what is about to happen and why… engages students and captures their interest,” (Class lecture). The opening to the lesson plan is so important because the teacher needs to capture the interest of the students, or they will be turned off right away to anything they are going to hear about.
The teacher will then introduce the lesson. This part of the lesson is teacher directed where the teacher is modeling for the students what they are learning. From here, the teacher can then guide the students as they practice the skill or information given to them. Then the students are free to practice independently. The teacher is still there to guide and direct the students if they are still struggling.
The last facet to lesson planning is the closing. “An effective lesson closing stresses connections and checks for understanding,” (Class lecture). This wraps up the lesson and the key points that the students learned. The significant objectives are stressed again, and the students are assessed for what they learned throughout the lesson. Students should be able to reiterate what the important concepts in the lesson. KWL charts are a great tool to assess what students learned, how effective the teaching was, and what the students are still interested in learning.
Another important thing that teachers should realize when they are planning lessons is that they are not alone. Teachers are working in the same building, but a lot of the time they are not communicating with each other. Harry and Rosemary Wong say, “We, as teachers, are better when we collaborate with each other,” (Wong and Wong, 285). Teachers can bounce ideas off and learn from each other. Effective teaching methods should not be a secret. Teachers need to be willing to share the things that work for them. This will heighten students’ learning as the teachers improve their methods of teaching.
- Wong, Harry K., and Rosemary T. Wong. The First Days of School: How to be an Effective Teacher. 4th ed. Mountain View, CA: Harry K. Wong Publications, Inc., 2009. Print.
My pre-practicim placement is in a primary classroom in an elementary school and attached is my focused observation journal entry
My Classroom
Effectively planning a lesson is essentail to the success of your teaching and what the students learn. As the researched showed, the opening of the lesson is so important to get the attention of the students. If I cannot get the students' attention when I start a new lesson, I will be struggling throughout the lesson trying to keep the students engaged and interested in what I am teaching them. Getting their attention and interest will work towards the success of the lesson because they will actually want to be learning more about the topic.
Being able to tie in information that the students have already learned is also a significant part of lesson planning. I have seen in my pre-practicum how much the students love it when the teacher can remember and tie in something the students said or did a week or even months ago. It helps the students to make connections to previous topics and it shows them how the information they learned already is building to incorporate more complex and intricate ideas.
As someone who is just starting out and learning to become a teacher, I think it is really important to use the other teachers that are around me to learn from. While each teacher has their own methods and teaching style that they use, each teacher has good techniques for teaching that have worked for them. I think it is important for teachers to share the things that work for them with other teachers so all of our students can benefit from it. The students are our number one priorities, so we should continue to learn as much as we can to give the best education possible.
Here are four lesson plans and reflections that I created in my Reading and Language Arts class. I implemented each of these in a previous pre-practicum:
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