Lesson plans
There are a lot of ways to make a lesson plan. Here are some suggestions that have proven successful. Begin by knowing your unit plans. Then work on your more micro lesson plans for each day.
Your class can be one unit or several.
Determine what you want to be the objective of the class.
- Be specific. This is a lot harder than it may seem at first. Don’t just choose “writing.” However, “Writing in an authoritative voice” is o.k.
- How do you want to approach writing? All of the below intersect one another in good writing, but most instructors choose to emphasize one over the others.
- Finding each student’s authoritative voice?
- Evaluating an argument and sources?
- Rhetorical persuasion?
- Invention?
- Structuring an argument?
- Other?
Determine how you will assess student’s final development.
Be sure you relate the assessment back to the goals of the class. If you assign a paper, for example, make sure the paper reflects what students should be learning in class.
- A series of papers?
- Identification and application of quotations from read works?
- A presentation?
- Evidence of definite improvement in skills?
- Conversation/discussion?
Know what you plan to teach. This plan can be specific, listing what you want to teach each day, or it can be more general, only detailing approximately how long you will spend on each topic before moving onto the next step. Now you can move onto the individual lesson plans.
The Lesson Plan (Return to Top)
Making a lesson plan looks complicated at first. But try it out and you will find lesson plans aren’t difficult at all, and are often intuitive. The hardest part will be always keeping your objective in mind while teaching the lesson. It is easy to get off-track.
- Incorporate Your Goals
- Connect each lesson to your overall goals for the class.
- Design each lesson based on your lesson schedule.
- Pick one thing you want students to learn that day.
- Ask yourself “What will students need to know for the lesson beforehand?”
- Determine how you will assess whether students meet that objective.
- Choose the format for the lesson.
- Review, lesson, practice
- Activation/Lesson: Open with a small activity, then use the activity as a lead into discussion
- Open discussion
- Teacher-led discussion
- Small group activity
- Whole class activity
- Check here for more information on different discussion techniques.
There are lots of options for this. Choose whichever suits your teaching needs.
- Write out a series of page numbers and quotations, and maybe a few notes, on what you consider important to discuss for the day.
- Write out a series of questions you want students to try to answer, or that will elicit discussion.
- Construct an outline that lists all your major topics and sub-topics, and their relations to each other.
- Other
More discussion techniques can be found under discussion methods. Other formats may be found under Instructional techniques.
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