Designing and Adapting Tasks in Lesson Planning: A Critical Process of Lesson Study

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  • Toshiakira Fujii 11  

Part of the book series: Advances in Mathematics Education ((AME))

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There is no doubt that a lesson plan is a necessary product of Lesson Study. However, the collaborative work among teachers that goes into creating that lesson plan is largely underappreciated by non-Japanese adopters of Lesson Study, possibly because the effort involved is invisible to outsiders, with our attention going to its most visible part, the live research lesson. This paper makes visible the process of lesson planning and the role and function of the lesson plan in Lesson Study, based on case studies conducted by project IMPULS at Tokyo Gakugei University in three Japanese schools. The paper identifies key features of the planning process in Lesson Study, including its focus on task design and the flow of the research lesson, and offers suggestions for educators seeking to improve Lesson Study outside Japan.

This chapter is built upon an article that formally appeared in ZDM: Fujii, T. (2016). Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning: a critical process of Lesson Study, ZDM, 48(4), 411–423.

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Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning: a critical process of lesson study.

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The Critical Role of Task Design in Lesson Study

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Lesson Study

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Thomas McDougal for reading and editing numerous revisions and for his invaluable comments on this paper.

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Toshiakira Fujii

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Akihiko Takahashi

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Appendix: The Task Given by the Teacher

The task given by the teacher was: “let’s write word problems that can be solved by 8 ÷ 2. Draw a picture or diagram for the problem situation. Also, write an equation and the answer, too”.

A

Division to find the group size (partitive division)

 

2 people are sharing 8 strawberries. How many strawberries does each person get?

 

Equation: 8 ÷ 2 = 4 Answer: 4 strawberries

B

Division to find the number of groups (quotative division)

 

We are going to give 2 strawberries to each person. If there are 8 strawberries, how many people will get strawberries?

 

Equation: 8 ÷ 2 = 4 Answer: 4 people

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Fujii, T. (2019). Designing and Adapting Tasks in Lesson Planning: A Critical Process of Lesson Study. In: Huang, R., Takahashi, A., da Ponte, J.P. (eds) Theory and Practice of Lesson Study in Mathematics. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04031-4_33

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"Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning" in University of Michigan CRLT GSI Guidebook, pp. 37-39

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2012, University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching

A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting. Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. http://crlt.umich.edu/sites/default/files/resource_files/GSI_Guidebook/GSI_Guidebook_37-39.pdf

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Personalized Professional Development

Lesson study helps teachers improve by focusing on collaboratively planning and revising a single lesson.

Three teachers looking at student work in the school library

There’s a form of cogent professional development that requires teachers to collaboratively create, participate in, and reflect on a lesson. It’s called lesson study, and it’s research-based, student-centered, and eye-opening.

What Is Lesson Study?

In lesson study, one teacher teaches a team-crafted lesson while their team observes. I was on a team with two classmates from my online graduate course, but the number of teammates can vary. The lesson the team works on is called a “research lesson” because it’s grounded in the research and best practices that team members bring to the process after agreeing upon the learning goals. After discussions and improvements, a second teacher teaches the revised research lesson.

Catherine Lewis and Jacqueline Hurd outline the pedagogical benefits of lesson study in Lesson Study Step by Step: How Teacher Learning Communities Improve Instruction , and teachers can apply Lewis and Hurd’s four-step method of peer-generated professional development to incite powerful, thought-provoking discourse and reflection.

1. Creating the study curriculum and formulating goals: To begin the work of relationship-building, my two teammates and I discussed what our classrooms looked and sounded like. We determined our goals for our lesson, and voted upon a number of tasks that we felt were aligned with our goals. We agreed to use an instructional framework outlined in the book 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions to guide our lesson.

Our goal was to explore the first and fifth Standards for Mathematical Practice:

  • SMP 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
  • SMP 5: Use appropriate tools strategically.

We settled upon Graham Fletcher’s “ Array-bow of Colors ,” a three-act task about using multiplication of two-digit factors to determine the number of Skittles in a jar. Our fourth and fifth graders knew various multiplication strategies but had no formal exposure to the standard algorithm. The strategy each student would choose would provide rich evidence about individual understanding of multi-digit multiplication.

2. Planning: Lewis and Hurd direct educators to find research content to support the focus of the lesson. This step creates the opportunity for teachers to deepen their content knowledge, share familiar instructional strategies, and create a bank of new ones.

This second step was critical to planning the research lesson because it required us to become aware of current research-based practices. Our research articles focused on types of questions that would facilitate, guide, and deepen our students’ thinking. We read, took notes on, and debated resources such as “The Importance, Nature, and Impact of Teacher Questions” by Jo Boaler and Karin Brodie, in order to apply our newfound information to our lesson.

We also took time to solve the task ourselves in as many ways as possible to anticipate student computations and misconceptions, create questions that we would ask to facilitate student thinking, and plan alternatives and extensions for struggling and advanced students.

3. Teaching the research lesson: In a normal lesson study, the teacher team is in the classroom for the teaching of the research lesson, observing and recording how student learning is impacted by the lesson design and how students react during the task.

Because my teammates and I don’t live in the same place, they were not in the room when I went first and taught it, so I recorded the lesson, which helped me critique myself. My reflections and the critical feedback of my teammates were both data for revising the lesson.

I asked several of the questions my teammates and I had generated together and recorded student work on an anticipation guide I had designed in order to connect the least sophisticated strategies to the most sophisticated strategies for the students.

4. Reflecting: In lesson study, teachers use things like student behavior, engagement, and interest level to analyze the depth of learning that has occurred. Reflecting requires teachers to discuss the supports they provided for students and, more importantly, to focus on the barriers to learning that may have been present in the research lesson.

Because we discussed the missteps in my execution of our lesson plan, my teammates and I adjusted (or retaught, in my case) accordingly to prevent these missteps from being learning barriers moving forward. These adjustments deepened our content knowledge as well, which is a compelling effect of lesson study.

Because I reflected upon the lesson from the students’ point of view, my focus remained on how to enhance their learning and thinking. Strengthening student learning allowed me to strengthen my own capabilities.

Lessons Learned

Lesson study allowed me to, as Lewis and Hurd wrote, view my instruction “through the eyes of students and colleagues.” It was a humbling experience, and it reminded me that even the best plans can be revised and enhanced.

Our lesson study was not quick—it took about four weeks. But there are shorter variations of lesson study that you and your colleagues can adopt.

If you decide to try a lesson study, I think you’ll find that it can help deepen relationships, provide impactful learning for both students and teachers, and serve as valuable professional development.

  • Research Skills

50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills

Please note, I am no longer blogging and this post hasn’t updated since April 2020.

For a number of years, Seth Godin has been talking about the need to “ connect the dots” rather than “collect the dots” . That is, rather than memorising information, students must be able to learn how to solve new problems, see patterns, and combine multiple perspectives.

Solid research skills underpin this. Having the fluency to find and use information successfully is an essential skill for life and work.

Today’s students have more information at their fingertips than ever before and this means the role of the teacher as a guide is more important than ever.

You might be wondering how you can fit teaching research skills into a busy curriculum? There aren’t enough hours in the day! The good news is, there are so many mini-lessons you can do to build students’ skills over time.

This post outlines 50 ideas for activities that could be done in just a few minutes (or stretched out to a longer lesson if you have the time!).

Learn More About The Research Process

I have a popular post called Teach Students How To Research Online In 5 Steps. It outlines a five-step approach to break down the research process into manageable chunks.

Learn about a simple search process for students in primary school, middle school, or high school Kathleen Morris

This post shares ideas for mini-lessons that could be carried out in the classroom throughout the year to help build students’ skills in the five areas of: clarify, search, delve, evaluate , and cite . It also includes ideas for learning about staying organised throughout the research process.

Notes about the 50 research activities:

  • These ideas can be adapted for different age groups from middle primary/elementary to senior high school.
  • Many of these ideas can be repeated throughout the year.
  • Depending on the age of your students, you can decide whether the activity will be more teacher or student led. Some activities suggest coming up with a list of words, questions, or phrases. Teachers of younger students could generate these themselves.
  • Depending on how much time you have, many of the activities can be either quickly modelled by the teacher, or extended to an hour-long lesson.
  • Some of the activities could fit into more than one category.
  • Looking for simple articles for younger students for some of the activities? Try DOGO News or Time for Kids . Newsela is also a great resource but you do need to sign up for free account.
  • Why not try a few activities in a staff meeting? Everyone can always brush up on their own research skills!

research on lesson planning

  • Choose a topic (e.g. koalas, basketball, Mount Everest) . Write as many questions as you can think of relating to that topic.
  • Make a mindmap of a topic you’re currently learning about. This could be either on paper or using an online tool like Bubbl.us .
  • Read a short book or article. Make a list of 5 words from the text that you don’t totally understand. Look up the meaning of the words in a dictionary (online or paper).
  • Look at a printed or digital copy of a short article with the title removed. Come up with as many different titles as possible that would fit the article.
  • Come up with a list of 5 different questions you could type into Google (e.g. Which country in Asia has the largest population?) Circle the keywords in each question.
  • Write down 10 words to describe a person, place, or topic. Come up with synonyms for these words using a tool like  Thesaurus.com .
  • Write pairs of synonyms on post-it notes (this could be done by the teacher or students). Each student in the class has one post-it note and walks around the classroom to find the person with the synonym to their word.

research on lesson planning

  • Explore how to search Google using your voice (i.e. click/tap on the microphone in the Google search box or on your phone/tablet keyboard) . List the pros and cons of using voice and text to search.
  • Open two different search engines in your browser such as Google and Bing. Type in a query and compare the results. Do all search engines work exactly the same?
  • Have students work in pairs to try out a different search engine (there are 11 listed here ). Report back to the class on the pros and cons.
  • Think of something you’re curious about, (e.g. What endangered animals live in the Amazon Rainforest?). Open Google in two tabs. In one search, type in one or two keywords ( e.g. Amazon Rainforest) . In the other search type in multiple relevant keywords (e.g. endangered animals Amazon rainforest).  Compare the results. Discuss the importance of being specific.
  • Similar to above, try two different searches where one phrase is in quotation marks and the other is not. For example, Origin of “raining cats and dogs” and Origin of raining cats and dogs . Discuss the difference that using quotation marks makes (It tells Google to search for the precise keywords in order.)
  • Try writing a question in Google with a few minor spelling mistakes. What happens? What happens if you add or leave out punctuation ?
  • Try the AGoogleADay.com daily search challenges from Google. The questions help older students learn about choosing keywords, deconstructing questions, and altering keywords.
  • Explore how Google uses autocomplete to suggest searches quickly. Try it out by typing in various queries (e.g. How to draw… or What is the tallest…). Discuss how these suggestions come about, how to use them, and whether they’re usually helpful.
  • Watch this video  from Code.org to learn more about how search works .
  • Take a look at  20 Instant Google Searches your Students Need to Know  by Eric Curts to learn about “ instant searches ”. Try one to try out. Perhaps each student could be assigned one to try and share with the class.
  • Experiment with typing some questions into Google that have a clear answer (e.g. “What is a parallelogram?” or “What is the highest mountain in the world?” or “What is the population of Australia?”). Look at the different ways the answers are displayed instantly within the search results — dictionary definitions, image cards, graphs etc.

What is the population of Australia

  • Watch the video How Does Google Know Everything About Me?  by Scientific American. Discuss the PageRank algorithm and how Google uses your data to customise search results.
  • Brainstorm a list of popular domains   (e.g. .com, .com.au, or your country’s domain) . Discuss if any domains might be more reliable than others and why (e.g. .gov or .edu) .
  • Discuss (or research) ways to open Google search results in a new tab to save your original search results  (i.e. right-click > open link in new tab or press control/command and click the link).
  • Try out a few Google searches (perhaps start with things like “car service” “cat food” or “fresh flowers”). A re there advertisements within the results? Discuss where these appear and how to spot them.
  • Look at ways to filter search results by using the tabs at the top of the page in Google (i.e. news, images, shopping, maps, videos etc.). Do the same filters appear for all Google searches? Try out a few different searches and see.
  • Type a question into Google and look for the “People also ask” and “Searches related to…” sections. Discuss how these could be useful. When should you use them or ignore them so you don’t go off on an irrelevant tangent? Is the information in the drop-down section under “People also ask” always the best?
  • Often, more current search results are more useful. Click on “tools” under the Google search box and then “any time” and your time frame of choice such as “Past month” or “Past year”.
  • Have students annotate their own “anatomy of a search result” example like the one I made below. Explore the different ways search results display; some have more details like sitelinks and some do not.

Anatomy of a google search result

  • Find two articles on a news topic from different publications. Or find a news article and an opinion piece on the same topic. Make a Venn diagram comparing the similarities and differences.
  • Choose a graph, map, or chart from The New York Times’ What’s Going On In This Graph series . Have a whole class or small group discussion about the data.
  • Look at images stripped of their captions on What’s Going On In This Picture? by The New York Times. Discuss the images in pairs or small groups. What can you tell?
  • Explore a website together as a class or in pairs — perhaps a news website. Identify all the advertisements .
  • Have a look at a fake website either as a whole class or in pairs/small groups. See if students can spot that these sites are not real. Discuss the fact that you can’t believe everything that’s online. Get started with these four examples of fake websites from Eric Curts.
  • Give students a copy of my website evaluation flowchart to analyse and then discuss as a class. Read more about the flowchart in this post.
  • As a class, look at a prompt from Mike Caulfield’s Four Moves . Either together or in small groups, have students fact check the prompts on the site. This resource explains more about the fact checking process. Note: some of these prompts are not suitable for younger students.
  • Practice skim reading — give students one minute to read a short article. Ask them to discuss what stood out to them. Headings? Bold words? Quotes? Then give students ten minutes to read the same article and discuss deep reading.

research on lesson planning

All students can benefit from learning about plagiarism, copyright, how to write information in their own words, and how to acknowledge the source. However, the formality of this process will depend on your students’ age and your curriculum guidelines.

  • Watch the video Citation for Beginners for an introduction to citation. Discuss the key points to remember.
  • Look up the definition of plagiarism using a variety of sources (dictionary, video, Wikipedia etc.). Create a definition as a class.
  • Find an interesting video on YouTube (perhaps a “life hack” video) and write a brief summary in your own words.
  • Have students pair up and tell each other about their weekend. Then have the listener try to verbalise or write their friend’s recount in their own words. Discuss how accurate this was.
  • Read the class a copy of a well known fairy tale. Have them write a short summary in their own words. Compare the versions that different students come up with.
  • Try out MyBib — a handy free online tool without ads that helps you create citations quickly and easily.
  • Give primary/elementary students a copy of Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Citation that matches their grade level (the guide covers grades 1 to 6). Choose one form of citation and create some examples as a class (e.g. a website or a book).
  • Make a list of things that are okay and not okay to do when researching, e.g. copy text from a website, use any image from Google images, paraphrase in your own words and cite your source, add a short quote and cite the source. 
  • Have students read a short article and then come up with a summary that would be considered plagiarism and one that would not be considered plagiarism. These could be shared with the class and the students asked to decide which one shows an example of plagiarism .
  • Older students could investigate the difference between paraphrasing and summarising . They could create a Venn diagram that compares the two.
  • Write a list of statements on the board that might be true or false ( e.g. The 1956 Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia. The rhinoceros is the largest land animal in the world. The current marathon world record is 2 hours, 7 minutes). Have students research these statements and decide whether they’re true or false by sharing their citations.

Staying Organised

research on lesson planning

  • Make a list of different ways you can take notes while researching — Google Docs, Google Keep, pen and paper etc. Discuss the pros and cons of each method.
  • Learn the keyboard shortcuts to help manage tabs (e.g. open new tab, reopen closed tab, go to next tab etc.). Perhaps students could all try out the shortcuts and share their favourite one with the class.
  • Find a collection of resources on a topic and add them to a Wakelet .
  • Listen to a short podcast or watch a brief video on a certain topic and sketchnote ideas. Sylvia Duckworth has some great tips about live sketchnoting
  • Learn how to use split screen to have one window open with your research, and another open with your notes (e.g. a Google spreadsheet, Google Doc, Microsoft Word or OneNote etc.) .

All teachers know it’s important to teach students to research well. Investing time in this process will also pay off throughout the year and the years to come. Students will be able to focus on analysing and synthesizing information, rather than the mechanics of the research process.

By trying out as many of these mini-lessons as possible throughout the year, you’ll be really helping your students to thrive in all areas of school, work, and life.

Also remember to model your own searches explicitly during class time. Talk out loud as you look things up and ask students for input. Learning together is the way to go!

You Might Also Enjoy Reading:

How To Evaluate Websites: A Guide For Teachers And Students

Five Tips for Teaching Students How to Research and Filter Information

Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills

8 Ways Teachers And Schools Can Communicate With Parents

Learn how to teach research skills to primary students, middle school students, or high school students. 50 activities that could be done in just a few minutes a day. Lots of Google search tips and research tips for kids and teachers. Free PDF included! Kathleen Morris | Primary Tech

10 Replies to “50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills”

Loving these ideas, thank you

This list is amazing. Thank you so much!

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So glad it’s helpful, Alex! 🙂

Hi I am a student who really needed some help on how to reasearch thanks for the help.

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So glad it helped! 🙂

seriously seriously grateful for your post. 🙂

' src=

So glad it’s helpful! Makes my day 🙂

How do you get the 50 mini lessons. I got the free one but am interested in the full version.

' src=

Hi Tracey, The link to the PDF with the 50 mini lessons is in the post. Here it is . Check out this post if you need more advice on teaching students how to research online. Hope that helps! Kathleen

Best wishes to you as you face your health battler. Hoping you’ve come out stronger and healthier from it. Your website is so helpful.

Comments are closed.

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Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning

Stiliana milkova center for research on learning and teaching.

A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting.  Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. A successful lesson plan addresses and integrates these three key components:

  • Objectives for student learning
  • Teaching/learning activities
  • Strategies to check student understanding

Specifying concrete objectives for student learning will help you determine the kinds of teaching and learning activities you will use in class, while those activities will define how you will check whether the learning objectives have been accomplished (see Fig. 1).

LessonPlan

Steps for Preparing a Lesson Plan

Below are six steps to guide you when you create your first lesson plans. Each step is accompanied by a set of questions meant to prompt reflection and aid you in designing your teaching and learning activities.

(1) Outline learning objectives

The first step is to determine what you want students to learn and be able to do at the end of class. To help you specify your objectives for student learning, answer the following questions:

  • What is the topic of the lesson?
  • What do I want students to learn?
  • What do I want them to understand and be able to do at the end of class?
  • What do I want them to take away from this particular lesson?

Once you outline the learning objectives for the class meeting, rank them in terms of their importance. This step will prepare you for managing class time and accomplishing the more important learning objectives in case you are pressed for time. Consider the following questions:

  • What are the most important concepts, ideas, or skills I want students to be able to grasp and apply?
  • Why are they important?
  • If I ran out of time, which ones could not be omitted?
  • And conversely, which ones could I skip if pressed for time?

(2) Develop the introduction

Now that you have your learning objectives in order of their importance, design the specific activities you will use to get students to understand and apply what they have learned. Because you will have a diverse body of students with different academic and personal experiences, they may already be familiar with the topic. That is why you might start with a question or activity to gauge students’ knowledge of the subject or possibly, their preconceived notions about it. For example, you can take a simple poll: “How many of you have heard of X? Raise your hand if you have.” You can also gather background information from your students prior to class by sending students an electronic survey or asking them to write comments on index cards. This additional information can help shape your introduction, learning activities, etc.  When you have an idea of the students’ familiarity with the topic, you will also have a sense of what to focus on.

Develop a creative introduction to the topic to stimulate interest and encourage thinking. You can use a variety of approaches to engage students (e.g., personal anecdote, historical event, thought-provoking dilemma, real-world example, short video clip, practical application, probing question, etc.). Consider the following questions when planning your introduction:

  • How will I check whether students know anything about the topic or have any preconceived notions about it?
  • What are some commonly held ideas (or possibly misconceptions) about this topic that students might be familiar with or might espouse?
  • What will I do to introduce the topic?

 (3) Plan the specific learning activities (the main body of the lesson)

Prepare several different ways of explaining the material (real-life examples, analogies, visuals, etc.) to catch the attention of more students and appeal to different learning styles. As you plan your examples and activities, estimate how much time you will spend on each. Build in time for extended explanation or discussion, but also be prepared to move on quickly to different applications or problems, and to identify strategies that check for understanding. These questions would help you design the learning activities you will use:

  • What will I do to explain the topic?
  • What will I do to illustrate the topic in a different way?
  • How can I engage students in the topic?
  • What are some relevant real-life examples, analogies, or situations that can help students understand the topic?
  • What will students need to do to help them understand the topic better?

(4) Plan to check for understanding

Now that you have explained the topic and illustrated it with different examples, you need to check for student understanding – how will you know that students are learning? Think about specific questions you can ask students in order to check for understanding, write them down, and then paraphrase them so that you are prepared to ask the questions in different ways. Try to predict the answers your questions will generate. Decide on whether you want students to respond orally or in writing. You can look at Strategies to Extend Student Thinking , http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/P4_4.php to help you generate some ideas and you can also ask yourself these questions:

  • What questions will I ask students to check for understanding?
  • What will I have students do to demonstrate that they are following?
  • Going back to my list of learning objectives, what activity can I have students do to check whether each of those has been accomplished?

An important strategy that will also help you with time management is to anticipate students’ questions. When planning your lesson, decide what kinds of questions will be productive for discussion and what questions might sidetrack the class. Think about and decide on the balance between covering content (accomplishing your learning objectives) and ensuring that students understand.

(5) Develop a conclusion and a preview

Go over the material covered in class by summarizing the main points of the lesson. You can do this in a number of ways: you can state the main points yourself (“Today we talked about…”), you can ask a student to help you summarize them, or you can even ask all students to write down on a piece of paper what they think were the main points of the lesson. You can review the students’ answers to gauge their understanding of the topic and then explain anything unclear the following class. Conclude the lesson not only by summarizing the main points, but also by previewing the next lesson. How does the topic relate to the one that’s coming? This preview will spur students’ interest and help them connect the different ideas within a larger context.

(6) Create a realistic timeline

GSIs know how easy it is to run out of time and not cover all of the many points they had planned to cover. A list of ten learning objectives is not realistic, so narrow down your list to the two or three key concepts, ideas, or skills you want students to learn. Instructors also agree that they often need to adjust their lesson plan during class depending on what the students need. Your list of prioritized learning objectives will help you make decisions on the spot and adjust your lesson plan as needed. Having additional examples or alternative activities will also allow you to be flexible. A realistic timeline will reflect your flexibility and readiness to adapt to the specific classroom environment. Here are some strategies for creating a realistic timeline:

  • Estimate how much time each of the activities will take, then plan some extra time for each
  • When you prepare your lesson plan, next to each activity indicate how much time you expect it will take
  • Plan a few minutes at the end of class to answer any remaining questions and to sum up key points
  • Plan an extra activity or discussion question in case you have time left
  • Be flexible – be ready to adjust your lesson plan to students’ needs and focus on what seems to be more productive rather than sticking to your original plan

Presenting the Lesson Plan

Letting your students know what they will be learning and doing in class will help keep them more engaged and on track. You can share your lesson plan by writing a brief agenda on the board or telling students explicitly what they will be learning and doing in class. You can outline on the board or on a handout the learning objectives for the class. Providing a meaningful organization of the class time can help students not only remember better, but also follow your presentation and understand the rationale behind in-class activities. Having a clearly visible agenda (e.g., on the board) will also help you and students stay on track.

Reflecting on Your Lesson Plan

A lesson plan may not work as well as you had expected due to a number of extraneous circumstances. You should not get discouraged – it happens to even the most experienced teachers! Take a few minutes after each class to reflect on what worked well and why, and what you could have done differently. Identifying successful and less successful organization of class time and activities would make it easier to adjust to the contingencies of the classroom. For additional feedback on planning and managing class time, you can use the following resources: student feedback, peer observation, viewing a videotape of your teaching, and consultation with a staff member at CRLT (see also, Improving Your Teaching: Obtaining Feedback , http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/P9_1.php and Early Feedback Form , http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/earlyfeedback.pdf).

To be effective, the lesson plan does not have to be an exhaustive document that describes each and every possible classroom scenario. Nor does it have to anticipate each and every student’s response or question. Instead, it should provide you with a general outline of your teaching goals, learning objectives, and means to accomplish them. It is a reminder of what you want to do and how you want to do it. A productive lesson is not one in which everything goes exactly as planned, but one in which both students and instructors learn from each other.

Additional Resources

Video clips of GSIs at the University of Michigan actively engaging students in a practice teaching session: https://crlte.engin.umich.edu/engineering-gsi-videos/ 

Plan the First Day's Session: How to create to a lesson plan for the first day of class:  http://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/pre-semester-intro/first-day-plan/

Fink, D. L. (2005). Integrated course design. Manhattan, KS: The IDEA Center. Retrieved from https://www.ideaedu.org/idea_papers/integrated-course-design/

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  5. Python for Research || Lesson 3: Cohort Analysis

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COMMENTS

  1. Meeting Cognitive Demands of Lesson Planning: Introducing the CODE-PLAN

    Cognitive demands of lesson planning. Written demonstration lesson plans were analyzed and indicators created. The creation of indicators was a time-consuming process done by our research group. The lesson plan coding was performed using a content analysis method based on deductively formed categories (Mayring, Citation 2014).

  2. Rethinking theories of lesson plan for effective teaching and learning

    Rethinking theories of lesson plan for effective teaching ...

  3. Lesson Planning With Engagement in Mind: Proactive Classroom Management

    This article highlights four research-based proactive strategy categories including whole-group response systems, movement integration, visual supports, and student choice. This article illustrates how teachers can embed strategies from these categories in their lesson planning and includes a lesson plan template with teacher-created examples.

  4. PDF Most Effective Practices in Lesson Planning

    Most Effective Practices in Lesson Planning By Sid T. ...

  5. (PDF) Rethinking Theories of Lesson Plan for Effective ...

    Theory-based lesson plan, seating. arrangement in the classroom, monitoring class activities, and teaching experience are essential for designing. and implementing lesson plans in the classroom ...

  6. A study of the instructional decisions and lesson planning strategies

    Instructional planning is clearly a complex process and how teachers design their instruction continues to grow and develop over time. In order to capture the themes and ideas stemming from this research, we created Fig. 1 as a visual representation or model that illustrates how instructional planning has been articulated in the literature. Within this model, the teacher identifies the ...

  7. A Framework for Lesson Planning

    A Framework for Lesson Planning

  8. Principles for Lesson Planning

    Lesson planning is a skill on which all teachers can improve. When teachers intentionally focus on three key principles for lesson planning, learning within the classroom can be directed toward accomplishing learning outcomes (LOs). The three principles are: (a) initiating the lesson planning process by articulating a clear LO; (b) designing ...

  9. Structuring the lesson: an empirical investigation of pre-service

    Structuring the lesson: an empirical investigation of pre- ...

  10. Designing and Adapting Tasks in Lesson Planning: A Critical ...

    It is widely understood that a lesson plan is an important product of Lesson Study, but despite much research into Lesson Study, the process of creating a lesson plan, as a collaborative effort by teachers, is largely invisible to non-Japanese adopters of Lesson Study. This paper tries to clarify the process of lesson planning and the role and ...

  11. (PDF) Rethinking theories of lesson plan for effective teaching and

    Theory-based lesson plan, seating. arrangement in the classroom, monitoring class activities, and teaching experience are essential for designing. and implementing lesson plans in the classroom ...

  12. PDF 37 Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning

    ent is to anticipate students' questions. When plan-ning your lesson, decide what kinds of questions will be productive for discussion a. d what questions might sidetrack the class. Think about and decide on the balance between covering content (accomplishing your learning object. and.(5) Develop a conclusion and a previewGo over the material ...

  13. Theory-based Evaluation of Lesson Study Professional Development

    Second, teachers collaboratively plan and develop a research lesson, based on identified goals, that anticipates and supports student learning. Next, a member of the group implements the lesson; at this stage, other members of the group observe the lesson and gather classroom data pertaining to the lesson's effectiveness.

  14. PDF Lesson Planning: Outcomes & Responsibilities in Planning

    analyzed the subject of lesson planning. The research data or rather the literature was comprised of multiple journals, white papers, and articles across the spectrum of lesson planning. It is a goal of this literature review that the research will assist in shaping responsibilities of individual instructors and course directors.

  15. (PDF) Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning: a critical

    (PDF) Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning

  16. PDF L e s s on P l a nni ng w i t h P ur pos e : F i ve A ppr oa c he s t o

    Throughout the book, teachers are challenged to experiment with these research-based approaches to lesson planning: (1) behaviorist, (2) constructivist, (3) aesthetic, (4) ecological, and (5) integrated social-emotional. A summary chapter reprises the book's central tenets and reframes teaching's uncomfortable uncertainties as rich and

  17. PDF Ways to Improve Lesson Planning: A Student Teacher Perspective By and

    16.04 32.59. Table 1 shows that the most frequent difficulties cited by student teachers in lesson. planning are : in choosing learning experiences appropriate to the learners, deciding and allotting. y lesson, in identifying and developing pr. per learning aids, and inexecuting the planned.

  18. (PDF) "Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning" in University of

    37 Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning Stiliana Milkova Center for Research on Learning and Teaching A lesson plan is the instructor's road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting.

  19. PDF What does research say are practices to support teachers to improve

    Lesson planning is a multifaceted process influenced by curricula, available materials, and teacher experience. Most research on lesson plans involve teacher interviews, observations, or evaluating lessons against specific criteria. Many of the causal studies below have identified practices to improve teachers' lesson planning within larger ...

  20. Lesson Study: Personalized, Research-Based Professional ...

    Lesson study helps teachers improve by focusing on collaboratively planning and revising a single lesson. There's a form of cogent professional development that requires teachers to collaboratively create, participate in, and reflect on a lesson. It's called lesson study, and it's research-based, student-centered, and eye-opening.

  21. PDF 37 Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning

    Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning

  22. 50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills

    50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills

  23. Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning

    Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning - CRLT