Lesson Planning--When do you learn it?

UBD?

 

Can someone tell me what a curriculum map consists of. Is it just the objectives for each subject?

 

UBD~Understanding By Design

 

Thanks, beccmo!

MissFrizzle: I am interested in that myself!

 

Curriculum maps help a lot with pacing out units. The maps I have seen include the order of the topics and objectives to teach as well as a timeline for each, so multiple schools in the same district are all basically on the same page. In the district I sub in there are so many students that move within the district during the school year, so it helps them the most.

 

I am a student, going into my last year. I have been subbing on my free day from classes to get a feel. I love teaching and feel that I have chose the right path for me. But what I have noticed is that teachers do not have an in depth lesson plan. I am required to write a 6 part lesson plan for my Praxis II, this is something that I can only do on assignments. Can anyone help me with how to prepare a 6 part lesson plan? I can teach a class on my own and create a lesson plan, but written out is difficult for me.

 

When I was taking my education classes, we did learn how to do lesson plans and long-range planning. However, I found that the type of lesson plans we did for my graduate courses (extremely detailed, usually 4-5 pages long for one lesson) wouldn't realistically work for me as a first grade teacher. I think that is where a lot of education programs and classes miss the mark. Most of them do touch on lesson plans, but in my experience (as well as that of some friends who are also new teachers), the type of lesson plans required in college classes are vastly different from the type of lesson plans they use at their school. It may just be my school (where lesson plans are just for us to use), but that seems to be the biggest difference between college lesson plans and real-life lesson plan experiences.

I spent a huge amount of time this past year learning the curriculums and the material, most of which are extremely scripted already. It seemed a waste of time to me to re-write materials needed, etc. when all of that is listed for me already in my teacher's manual. I still use detailed lesson plans that someone could teach from if they walked into my room on a moment's notice, but the things that are already listed in my teacher's manuals I don't re-write in my plans.

As far as long-range planning; we did some short term long-range planning in my education courses, but nothing that would cover the whole year. At the most, it was units that were 6-8 weeks long that we planned for. I was fortunate enough to walk into a school that had year-long implementation/planning guides already for reading, math, social studies, and writing, so I haven't had to do a lot of long-range planning.

 

Let's see if the lesson plan method I learned works for your 6-part LP:

1. Introductory Activity: Get their attention
Activate prior knowledge

2. Explicit Instruction
All questions should be higher order thinking, or "fat" questions
Teacher models the method/activity/skill

3. Guided Practice Students attempt method/activity/skill with teacher assistance
Teacher's modeled example stays in sight
Teacher roams the room, checking on student understanding

4. Independent Practice
Students are given the opportunity to use the method without teacher assistance. This is where graphic organizers, worksheets, journal entries, etc. generally come in.

5. Closure Teacher brings class back together.
Teacher reviews method/activity/skill with students using higher order thinking or "fat" questions

6. Assessment Paper: worksheet, graphic organizer, rubric, etc.
Nonpaper: anecdotal (teacher) notes, teacher observations

Yep, that's six steps! I hope it is what you needed! This format utilizes the "gradual release of responsibility" process.

 

Hi guys PLEASE HELP. What does the following mean? I'm planning a 'hypothetical' curriculum for my assignment (I'm only a grad student in ESL teaching) and one part asks:
'...discuss any contextual factors which need to be considered either with regard to the immediate context or the target context' - I would appreciate if someone could help with this.

 

Who are your hypothetical students, teach888?

 

Unit Plans

Hi Malcom, is there any way you could send me a sample of a unit plan? Also what does it mean when you have to discuss 'contextual factors with regard to immediate context or the target context'?
Please explain.


Thank you.

 

pwhatley's post #48 above gives a format for a six-part lesson plan, teach888. If that doesn't help, try Googling "lesson plan esl"; chances are pretty good you'll find at least one Web site with lesson plans that will give you a better sense of what you can do.

"Hunter" is Madeline Hunter. Here's a Web site that might be helpful: http://www.humboldt.edu/~tha1/hunter-eei.html

That's a very curious sentence you've got to parse, teach888. I believe that "immediate context" in terms of ESL refers to the classroom and what's in it, and perhaps also to the background that the language learner brings to the classroom; this article (http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/AUSQA.html) points out that line drawings (for example) may not be very successful as teaching aids if they don't resonate with a language learner's background. In other words, it seems that immediate context need not be primarily linguistic. "Target language", of course, refers to the language being learned, so it seems plausible that "target context" does in fact refer to linguistic context, or at any rate to aspects of the use of the target language.

Please do, though, doublecheck this with your instructor. I would hate to have you get a bad mark because my wild guesses prove wrong.

 

I agree with TG(4 more)

 

I like to be agreed with, jw13. What specifically do you agree about?

 

That the Madeline Hunter website is helpful?(2more)

 

Do you use the six-part lesson plan?

 

Thank you very much for all the info.

 

Hypothetical Adult ESL class in a community college. Of course this would be quite multi-cultural and include people of various ages and backgrounds. For this, I have to use my imagination as I've never taught in a formal setting before apart from a 6 month teaching sting in Turkey in 1991! Even then, it was just teaching off a syllabus. I've also sent an email to my tutor hoping he can help with this.

 

At my college the Exceptional Education has it's own lesson plan format. So I learned that when I took the first half of those classes and I am expected to use in in any Ex Ed class that requires a lesson plan. When I took my intro to literacy class she had a separate format for all 3 projects we did. They were similar in the layout, but they used different wordings. And then in my methods classes I'm sure I will learn more.

 

At my school, We were taught in one of our methods classes and they were to be well thought out....everything from objectives, materials, state standards, procedures, and assessment were to be detailed.

After that class, I had others that would give us other lesson plan formats. They would want other things included, for example accommodations, but would take things like state standards out. It was really confusing. Then when we get into student teaching, we are supposed to adopt the lesson format that the CT uses.

It's just all a bit confusing.

 

My teacher program did NOT prepare me for writing lesson plans at all -- much less at my first school. At my first school, they wanted (demanded actually) a combination of Hunter and the six steps -- for every subject, for every day! Each plan was at least 2 pages long.

Language Arts (Editing/Grammar/Focus Skill)- 2 pages per day
Shared reading - 2 pages per day
Each guided reading group -- 1 1/2 pages per day (Three groups PER day required -- no exceptions,ever!)
Science or Social Studies - 2 pages
Writing - 2 pages
Math - 2 pages
Calendar Math - 2 pages (although you could cut and paste a lot of this, because it was basically the same each day.)

That was 16 and 1/2 pages PER DAY! My lesson plans were over 50 pages per week! Try writing 30 anticipatory sets per week? I'm just not that creative! It was a nightmare. And if you didn't do it, they'd put you on a plan of action. They had weekly checks for new teachers, and if it wasn't up to their standards, you had to rewrite it and have it turned back in by the next morning. They made you rewrite them A LOT. I spent every waking hour writing those lesson plans. Thank goodness the principal waS moved, and our next one was much more understanding.

It wasn't until I got to a "normal" school that I realized not everyone required such a horse and pony show.

 

Where I attended certification classes, we had to use nothing but Madeleine Hunter lesson plans, to the letter. I still have the template I made so I wouldn't leave anything out! I always ended up with lesson plans for one 60-minute session that were 4-5 pages long! We had to document everything (using APA format, of course), list EVERY single step and word that were to be used, list formal and informal, formative and summative assessments including rubrics. We were required to document where we got the idea from (because of course, none of us could have come up with an original idea on our own!), and provide a long and detailed reflection upon completion and use of the plan. It was extremely tedious, that's for sure -- I spent plenty of time in the wee small hours of the night/morning typing with eyes crossed from sleepiness. One thing about it, though -- we definitely learned how to write a complete lesson plan!

 

I am attending Illinois State University (will graduate in a month! Woo!). I feel that I was VERY well prepared in lesson planning. That is pretty much what my last two years in the ECE program consisted of. I am very fortunate!

 

In my teaching program that I finished almost every class we had to do some sort of unit or mini unit. Most of the time it was in a group, but we felt like we were over prepared for planning. We learned how to do long range planning, and also how to integrate our subjects. When I did my student teaching I was fully prepared, and I am now very excited about getting my first job. Thanks to my college .

 

In every class I had to write and present at least one very detailed lesson plan. In each of my clinical assignments prior to student teaching I had to have them written when I was observed by the college as well as during three observations during student teaching. I was relieved I didn't have to write them for every lesson during student teaching but I will say that I was much better prepared when I wrote such a detailed lesson plan. Even now when my lessons don't go quite the way I want them to, I go back to that lesson plan format to think things through more fully.

 

I'm in U of Hawaii's elementary ed program and we start learning how to lesson plan in our first semester. The one qualm I had with that was because each of the professors wanted lesson plans done in a different format instead of one unified template. It caused me headaches when I integrated subjects and had to reformat the same lesson to please both of my professors.

 

That was actually one of my main concerns a couple of years ago in college: When do we learn how to make lessons? When we finally took a class on it, it was pretty much like "Here are your curriculum map project requirements. Now let's talk about something else not relating to planning". Next year when I did my student teaching, I ended up asking my cooperating teacher to help me with them.

 

LMBO. I just took my very first grad class and my very first methods class. I was told to make a unit plan and here's some stuff to put in it. I was the ONLY one in the entire class that included a block plan because nobody knew what it was. I looked up examples on the internet. I got very good marks. Who taught me? ME!

 

I have found that to be true. I felt completely prepared for writing a good lesson, but I was completely unprepared for long-range planning. It's still really hard for me. On the other hand, I think it takes a while in the classroom to learn how long things will really take and how much lost time to build in (for interruptions with assemblies, testing, blah blah) before you can really effectively plan long term. Still... I wish I'd had more instruction in unit planning and in assessments (meaning how to write & grade tests and writing assignments).

I suppose, just like us, those college teachers have more to teach than they have time for.

 

I haven't started student teaching yet (will in the Fall), however I have completed all of my methods and foundations classes except for classroom management. I have had to write lesson or unit plans in almost all methods classes. Unfortunately, no teacher ever went into much detail on how to actually write a lesson or unit. We were given a template (I looked up this Hunter method and it looks to be similar to that) and we had some discussion about it...but were never explicitly taught. In my reading/writing methods class, on the last day she gave us an example of a year long plan which was hugely overwhelming to see--and she gave us 20 mins. to write out a year long plan for reading/writing in the elementary school. hmy: I am hoping I will get a lot more practice in this during my last two semesters of student teaching!!

 

it is so funny to see this post because i had such a terrible time working with my cooperating teacher during student teaching due to my inability to plan. My college program never taught me how to plan a unit, but it was one of the requirements for the solo teaching weeks we had to complete during student teaching. I asked my coop. teacher for help, but she said "This is a master's plus certification program, you should know how to do this by now" How helpful! I wish there was a course devoted solely to planning. It would have been a huge help.

 

That wasn't very helpful at all! Of course I know that teachers often barely have the time for the ST. In our school they are assigned. You don't have the choice of whether you want one or not. If the teacher is somewhat overwhelmed they will get annoyed at what appears to be handholding.

 

Oh goodness. I'm finishing up my grad courses and am doing the practicum now. I only learned lesson planning for a lesson, not a week or month or year! I did do a unit plan.