2022 Lesson Plan Assignment

Assignment: Due: August 1

Notes from Daniel Redman about Lesson Plans:

  • Try to pick one specific thread or idea from the things you’ve learned about in our sessions to focus on in your lesson – you don’t want to go to broad or ambitious for it to be useful.
  • Pick a Common Core or State Standard of your choice to ground your lesson in. My advice is to pick one, but I wouldn’t do more than two, even if you’re feeling like you want to go big.
    • What about that standard can the content you’ve learned in our sessions help you explore? How can these things you’re learning help to teach that standard?
  • Thinking about the standard(s) you’ve chosen, write 1-2 Essential Questions that will drive the lesson. What is the big idea or big question you want your students to be able to answer after this lesson? Make it focused enough to be achievable in this lesson, since you’re not planning a full sequence or unit.
  • Once you know what you want them to be able to answer, decide on your Learning Objectives. That is: what will students be able to do, or what will they know, after the lesson? Learning Objectives are not what they’re doing in the lesson – those are instructional strategies. Learning Objectives are what they’re going to be learning during the lesson, and what you’re going to assess for at the end.
    1. My advice is to make two LOs, but I wouldn’t do more than three at maximum.
    2. It can help to start LOs with your classic “SWBAT” – “Students will be able to…” and then follow up with a Bloom’s Taxonomy verb.
    3. Blooms Verbs: Bloom’s Taxonomy | Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University
    4. I like to sometimes, when it’s helpful, think of Bloom’s as a possible scaffolding ladder. You don’t have to approach it that way – you could use all higher-level Blooms Verbs if you like. But, it can be helpful to students to have one lower-lever verb for the first Learning Objective and a higher-lever verb for the second, so your planning will help them gradually work up to the higher cognitive task.Example:
      • LO1: Students will be able to identify key aspects of the medical system in Estonia
      • LO2: Students will be able to develop a model for how other nations could implement some Estonian innovations in medicine
    5. Identify your plans for a pre-assessment and think of it as an opener for the lesson
    6. The rest is self-explanatory: your 5-7 basic instructional steps outlining the strategies you have in mind for how the students will achieve your Learning Objectives, a closing activity that brings it all together and addresses your Learning Objectives so you can assess how well students learned, and what post-assessment tool you’re going to use to collect that data (e.g., an Exit Ticket, Mini-Quiz, etc.)
    7. There is value in the reflection section, but our focus is on the Lesson Plans, so pay more attention to the resources and extensions as you wrap things up.