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How Do We Plan Lessons And Why Is It Important?
written by Victoria (Viki) B. Wilson

What Is A Lesson Plan and Why Is It Important?
A lesson plan is a well thought-out plan of what material is to be covered and how it is to be taught to the students by the teacher for the school year. It is a plan that the teacher has developed according to the curriculum and includes the Virginia Standards of Learning Pacing Guidelines. These plans can be designed on an individual basis, but are best when there is a collaborative groups of teachers in the same school who are teaching at the same grade level plotting their goals for the academic year. This is so all classes of this grade will be on the same page throughout the year.

Can you image walking into a class of first graders with no plan? Lesson plans not only remind the teacher where they are in the curriculum, but also help to keep them on track so that all of the vital educational material is covered in the school year. Teachers do not ever want to arrive at school without a prepared plan for their class for the day. Lesson Plans are sometimes part of the teaching job that teachers do not enjoy preparing, but after they have accomplished this task they are thankful for the guidance it provides them with each day in their classrooms. It is a tedious and daunting task, but with today's technology aides and the help of first-year teacher mentors, the job seems less challenging.

Let's Talk About What Are The Ingredients Of A Lesson Plan
In the book Bringing Learning Alive! by The Teachers' Curriculum Institute of Palo Alto, California, it states that there are five rules to planning your course with lesson plans:

(1) Know the standards, essential content, skills, and objectives that must be taught.

(2) Gather a wealth of rich resources -- visual images, music, readings, activity ideas--to make the content more accessible for students.

(3) Collaborate with their fellow teachers to generate or review new ideas about the course.

(4) Plan a realistic master course calendar, making the difficult content choices to ensure that the units they choose are taught thoroughly.

(5) Create a final semester or course assessment that both prepares students for any mandatory standardized testing and also allows students to show what they know about major themes and key standards (Maloney, p.221).

As you can see, the number one item is to know what the curriculum and state requirements are first. Then you can establish your subject matter and divide it into "chunks" or pieces of the pie to determine what you can realistically teach the students well versus how much of the material you can just cover. Begin with your school calendar and count up your exact number of teaching days. This is important when planning your lesson plans, because the calendar will include non-instructional days such as staff development days, testing days, and particularly in high school the days when there are club meetings or pep rallies. These days must be considered, or you will find out that you have short-changed your time in your lesson plans and can not cover the necessary data.

Number two is probably one of the most fun parts of the lesson, and that is collecting the resources to provide your students with a visual such as a video segment, a map, a movie, or transparencies on the over-head projector.

Getting together with the other teachers in number three can be such an eye-opener especially for new teachers. It is very important for elementary teachers of the same grade to get together and discuss their lesson plans and all be working towards the same goals at the same time. An example of this could be teachers introducing poems to the students and the art, music, or even physical education teachers are aware of this and can introduce rhythming songs to sing in music or when jumping rope and even drawing pictures to illustrate a poem could all be integrated during this lesson.

Number four reminds teacher to not over-plan and be realistic with their lesson plans. The teacher must remember to design the lesson around an essential element or question that is the whole meaning of learning the lesson to begin with. The lesson must interest the students and even though not all students are stimulated the same way, the teacher must understand this and find the best methods to make the material interesting to all students. There is a wealth of new technologies such as www.unitedstreaming.com which is a website that brings videos straight into the classroom along with providing data sheets for the students along with lesson plans for the teachers. Make the lesson stimulating and the students will enjoy it and learn.

Last, according to the Teachers' Curriculum Institute prepare the students for the assessment tests of all your lessons for the week or for the year. Make sure that your testing will be a good reflection of the state SOL testing. Another idea here is to allow the student to rate or give feed-back about which lessons they found most interesting during the year and whatever feedback they wish to include about how to change the way something was taught to them during the school year.

Free Internet Lesson Plans
In the January/February 2006 issue of "The Social Studies" Journal, there is a wonderful article about designing a lesson plan to shatter stereotypes. This article talks about the problems of attitudes and behavior toward minority groups especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This article includes a free lesson plan for teachers who wish to incorporate this subject into their curriculum. This is the description of the lesson it will teach:

"The lesson plan could be part of a larger unit plan dealing with prejudice, discrimination, and racism in American or world history. It could also be used in government, civics, and sociology courses.  The activities will help students understand the dangerous consequences that stereotypes have had in history, improve their knowledge of minority groups, and develop strategies for combating prejudice and discrimination" (Moore, 2006).

There are many websites with free lesson plans and there are also some websites you can join and get a membership so that you can access the plans. Here is a same list of the ones that are highly recommended:

Google For Educators @ http://www.google.com/educators/index.html LessonPlanZ @ http://www.lessonplanz.com/ WELCOME to A to Z Teacher Stuff @ http://atozteacherstuff.com/ PBS Teachers @ http://www.pbs.org/teachers/

According to an article in an edition of Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication, here are some activites to include in your lesson plans that are sure to get the attention of your students: examine editorial cartoons, analyze photos, debate it, map it, chart it, graph it (Weekly Reader, 2007). All of these will spark your students' creativity and interest.

Field Trip Lesson Plans
Do you think that you should have a lesson plan for a field trip? Of course you do, this is so that you can relate the material that you have covered in class to what the students are seeing while on the field trip.

James Kisiel has written an article for the Science Activities Journal entitled "More than Lions and Tigers and Bears-Creating Meaningful Field Trip Lessons," and it a complete lesson plan with the information for the teacher of how to go about making a field trip connect to the curriculum. His essential question is "What Makes a Mammal?" and he is taking his students to a museum. Mr. Kisiel states: "The approach of a field trip-based unit involves the use of the learning cycle model (Barman and Kotar 1989; Barman 1989).  The observations and experiences of the exploration phase, in which students play an active role in examining the animal exhibits and gathering information, are given additional meaning through the concept introduction phase, in which the teacher plays a more active role in connecting student experiences to particular concepts, such as habitat, mammal, or adaptation.  The concept application phase allows students to test their new ideas by introducing a new situation and asking students to relate their developing ideas and concepts to that new situation" (Kisiel, 2006).

The entire field trip lesson plans can be found in this article by James Kisiel who is the assistant professor of science education at California State University at this website: .

All Teachers Need Lesson Plans
All teachers need lesson plans from preschool to college and beyond. Aristotle said we are all goal oriented and Socrates said we all want happiness. Teachers can achieve their goals and find happiness through the joys of having good working lesson plans.

In their article, Ensuring Lessons Teach the Curriculum with a Lesson Plan Resource, Heddi Craft and Paul D. Bland make this comparison about teachers and how they teach: "Some teachers are like chefs and they serve their student the same basic "recipes" year after year.  These lessons often are tasy and effective, familiar standbys that are relied on and enjoyed.  Other teachers are like experimental chefs, never content to use the same recipe for instruction twice, always looking to try new ingredients and styles" (Craft, 2003).

Think about teaching as serving your students a meal. Wouldn't you get tried of eating the same thing over and over again. Variety of resources and teaching styles will keep your students attentive and learning.

Multiple Choice Questions
''' (1) Why are lesson plans an important part of teaching? '''

(a) Lesson plans guide the teacher in the subject matter.

(b) Lesson plans account for only the instructional days in a calendar.

(c) Lesson plans make sure the curriculum and the state standards are accomplished.

(d) All of the above.

''' (2) How does collaborating with fellow teachers help your lesson plans? '''

(a) It helps you because they will steal your lesson plan.

(b) It helps you teach your students the subject matter, because they can reiterate it in their lessons also.

(c) It makes you proud of your lesson plans to share them with fellow teachers.

(d) Collaborating with other teachers is never helpful.

''' (3) After a year of teaching, your principal wishes to evaluate you. Can you lesson plans show your worth as a teacher? '''

(a) Principals do not care about your lesson plans, so they will not help his evaluation of you.

(b) Teaching is a year to year job and no matter how great a teacher you are, lesson plans will not make or break you.

(c) Carefully planned and executed lesson plans along with the curriculum guide and the SOL pacing guide are definitely great representations of a good teacher performance.

(d) The only thing a principal looks at to evaluate your performance are your students SOL scores.

''' (4) How can a field trip help you in teaching your students the subject matter? '''

(a) Field trips are fun and the kids don't have to learn anything while on the trip.

(b) The field trip that is planned to include the lesson plans will give the students more visual, auditory and kinetic (hands-on) learning.

(c) Students are wide-open on field trips and there is no way to teach them anything.

(d) Field trips can help the teacher by keeping the students occupied.

''' (5) What types of technological resources can a teacher introduce in the lesson to motivate the students? '''

(a) Movies, video streaming, over-head projections, mapping.

(b) Giving them more paperwork to accomplish.

(c) Assigning homework.

(d) Explaining how important the subject matter will be to them someday!

Multiple Choice Question Answers:
(1) (d)

(2) (b)

(3) (c)

(4) (b)

(5) (a)

Essay Response
Sample Essay Response by Victoria (Viki) B. Wilson

The best lesson plan is the plan that is constantly evolving each time the lesson is taught or even during the teaching of the lesson the plan can change by shrinking or expanding. Teachers need to be very flexible with the content and the resources while retaining the curriculum element that is the driving force. An example of this could be that while teaching the subject of electricity, the class and the school is out due to bad weather and the lesson must be cut short to accommodate this shortage of time. The teacher would extract from the lesson a couple of experiments or presentations that would have been great extras if the time had allowed. The material that is subtracted must not take away from the message and necessities of the entire lesson, only the extra reinforcing the data would have provided if the time had been as planned. Lesson plans are just plans, they are not written in stone! All plans, no matter if they are for vacations or for teaching should have lots of flexibility and spontaneity for whatever situations occur. These plans even if never changed from the first time they are taught, should be reevaluated on a regular basis to make sure the content and the structure or time frame should change or not change according to the changes of the day. World events can easily change lessons when comparing history with current events. Science changes daily and some science projects that have previously been used in lesson plans may need tweaking from time to time. Teachers should always be seeking to improve their lessons, and this is why along with current events of the world lesson plans should never become stagnant. To teach is a gift, the students receive a gift in learning and the teacher receives one in teaching. Lesson plans make a teacher's day better!