Why do I need to know how to create a lesson plan? The bible says “without a vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 By having a thought out, detailed lesson it insures that we will maximizes the instructional time we have with our children. Another benefit to creating a lesson plan is it can be reused at a later date, for another child. There are seven key factors in creating the perfect lesson plan:
1. The first step is gaining the attention of your students/children. It would highly benefit you to begin each lesson with an instructional event to spark an interest and curiosity in the students. A great way to do this is to ask questions that arouse their curiosity. For example, ” Have you ever wondered how some creatures can live both on land and in the water?” ( from a lesson on amphibious animals) Another way to get your students/ children’s attention is to give an apparent contradiction: Why must something go backwards every time something else goes forward?
2. Informing Learners of the Objective– Getting the childrens attention is great, but that doesn’t guarantee that they will remain attentive it all depends on the way you present the lesson. The best way to focus the children is to tell them the behavior outcome they will be expected to have at the end of the lesson. For example, ” remember the four definitions of power that will be presented (science)” By telling them what you expect them to learn will allow the learners to know when they have attained the expected level of behavior, and to become selective in how to use and remember the lesson information.
3. Stimulating Recall of Prerequisite Learning– This is the final preliminary instructional event needed. Each lesson should build on one another. This calls for some time of reviewing, summarizing or restating key concepts stated in previous lessons. This information will help achieve the outcome intended for the present lesson. For example,” if your goal is to have learners use a microscope to properly distinguish an amoeba from other single-celled animals, they would of have some previously acquired facts, concepts, and skills relevant to this new task.
4. Presenting the Stimulus Material– presenting the stimulus material will be the heart of your lesson, there are three parts to completing it that often go unnoticed.
a. Authenticity– presenting the content in a way that they child will be able to use it outside of the learning environment. For example, ” show how the laws of electricity apply to lightning during a thunderstorm as well as to electrical circuitry in the laboratory.”
b. Selectivity– emphasize the content most important to your lesson. Not everything in a chapter will be of equal importance to the day’s objective. For example, “highlighting key aspects of the text at the beginning of the lesson will give the students selectively review the main points.”
c. Variety– gaining the students attention at the start of a lesson is one thing, but keeping their attention is quite another. A great way to keep their interest is to use variety in the modalities of instruction. For example, ” use visual, and oral, tactile.”
5. Eliciting the Desired Behavior– give the children an opportunity to show they can perform the behaviors at the intended level of complexity. Learning cannot occur effectively in a passive environment, the students must have an opportunity to deal in a trial and error fashion. For example, ” summarizing, paraphrasing, applying or solving a problem involving the lesson content.
6. Providing Feedback– this is different from step five, eliciting the desired behavior gives each student a chance to show how well they know the information. The feedback that immediately follows can be directed to the everyone, the entire class. For example, ” you can read aloud the correct answer from a workbook, or provide a handout with the correct answers.”
7. Assessing the Behavior– you do not have to provide all your eliciting activities and feedback within a single instructional period. There are other ways to engage your students in the learning process. For example, test or homework problems to be returned the next day, or extended problems that are returned days or weeks later ( essays, research papers, portfolios).