importance of assignment in lesson plan

A survey conducted by the Associated Press has revealed that around 58% of parents feel that their child has been given the right amount of assignments. Educators are thrilled that the majority has supported the thought of allocating assignments, and they think that it is just right.

However, the question arises when students question the importance of giving assignments for better growth. Studies have shown that students often get unsuccessful in understanding the importance of assignments.

What key purpose does an assignment have? They often question how an assignment could be beneficial. Let us explain why a teacher thinks it is best to allot assignments. The essential functions of assigning tasks or giving assignments come from many intentions. 

What is the Importance of Assignment- For Students 

The importance of the assignment is not a new concept. The principle of allocating assignments stems from students’ learning process. It helps teachers to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject. Assignments develop different practical skills and increase their knowledge base significantly. As per educational experts, mastering a topic is not an impossible task to achieve if they learn and develop these skills.  

Cognitive enhancement 

While doing assignments, students learn how to conduct research on subjects and comprise the data for using the information in the given tasks. Working on your assignment helps you learn diverse subjects, compare facts, and understand related concepts. It assists your brain in processing information and memorizing the required one. This exercise enhances your brain activity and directly impacts cognitive growth. 

Ensured knowledge gain   

When your teacher gives you an assignment, they intend to let you know the importance of the assignment. Working on it helps students to develop their thoughts on particular subjects. The idea supports students to get deep insights and also enriches their learning. Continuous learning opens up the window for knowledge on diverse topics. The learning horizon expanded, and students gained expertise in subjects over time.      

Improve students’ writing pattern 

Experts have revealed in a study that most students find it challenging to complete assignments as they are not good at writing. With proper assistance or teacher guidance, students can practice writing repetitively.

It encourages them to try their hands at different writing styles, and gradually they will improve their own writing pattern and increase their writing speed. It contributes to their writing improvement and makes it certain that students get a confidence boost. 

Increased focus on studies 

When your teachers allocate a task to complete assignments, it is somehow linked to your academic growth, especially for the university and grad school students. Therefore, it demands ultimate concentration to establish your insights regarding the topics of your assignments.

This process assists you in achieving good growth in your academic career and aids students in learning concepts quickly with better focus. It ensures that you stay focused while doing work and deliver better results.         

Build planning & organization tactics

Planning and task organization are as necessary as writing the assignment. As per educational experts, when you work on assignments, you start planning to structurize the content and what type of information you will use and then organize your workflow accordingly. This process supports you in building your skill to plan things beforehand and organize them to get them done without hassles.   

Adopt advanced research technique

Assignments expand the horizon of research skills among students. Learners explore different topics, gather diverse knowledge on different aspects of a particular topic, and use useful information on their tasks. Students adopt advanced research techniques to search for relevant information from diversified sources and identify correct facts and stats through these steps.  

Augmenting reasoning & analytical skills 

Crafting an assignment has one more sign that we overlook. Experts have enough proof that doing an assignment augments students’ reasoning abilities. They started thinking logically and used their analytical skills while writing their assignments. It offers clarity of the assignment subject, and they gradually develop their own perspective about the subject and offer that through assignments.     

Boost your time management skills 

Time management is one of the key skills that develop through assignments. It makes them disciplined and conscious of the value of time during their study years. However, students often delay as they get enough time. Set deadlines help students manage their time. Therefore, students understand that they need to invest their time wisely and also it’s necessary to complete assignments on time or before the deadline.  

What is the Importance of Assignment- Other Functions From Teacher’s Perspective: 

Develop an understanding between teacher and students  .

Teachers ensure that students get clear instructions from their end through the assignment as it is necessary. They also get a glimpse of how much students have understood the subject. The clarity regarding the topic ensures that whether students have mastered the topic or need further clarification to eliminate doubts and confusion. It creates an understanding between the teaching faculty and learners. 

Clarity- what is the reason for choosing the assignment 

The Reason for the assignment allocated to students should be clear. The transparency of why teachers have assigned the task enables learners to understand why it is essential for their knowledge growth. With understanding, the students try to fulfill the objective. Overall, it fuels their thoughts that successfully evoke their insights. 

Building a strong relationship- Showing how to complete tasks 

When a teacher shows students how to complete tasks, it builds a strong student-teacher relationship. Firstly, students understand the teacher’s perspective and why they are entrusted with assignments. Secondly, it also encourages them to handle problems intelligently. This single activity also offers them the right direction in completing their tasks within the shortest period without sacrificing quality. 

Get a view of what students have understood and their perspective 

Assigning a task brings forth the students’ understanding of a particular subject. Moreover, when they attempt an assignment, it reflects their perspective on the specific subject. The process is related to the integration of appreciative learning principles. In this principle, teachers see how students interpret the subject. Students master the subject effectively, whereas teachers find the evaluation process relatively easy when done correctly. 

Chance to clear doubts or confusion regarding the assignment  

Mastering a subject needs practice and deep understanding from a teacher’s perspective. It could be possible only if students dedicate their time to assignments. While doing assignments, students could face conceptual difficulties, or some parts could confuse them. Through the task, teachers can clear their doubts and confusion and ensure that they fully understand what they are learning.   

Offering individualistic provisions to complete an assignment 

Students are divergent, and their thoughts are diverse in intelligence, temperaments, and aptitudes. Their differences reflect in their assignments and the insight they present. This process gives them a fair understanding of students’ future and their scope to grow. It also helps teachers to understand their differences and recognize their individualistic approaches.  

Conclusion:

You have already become acquainted with the factors that translate what is the importance of assignments in academics. It plays a vital role in increasing the students’ growth multifold. 

TutorBin is one of the best assignment help for students. Our experts connect students to improve their learning opportunities. Therefore, it creates scopes of effective education for all, irrespective of location, race, and education system. We have a strong team of tutors, and our team offers diverse services, including lab work, project reports, writing services, and presentations.

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The Importance of Lesson Planning: A Guide for Effective Teaching

The first step in creating a lesson plan is to outline the learning objectives. These objectives serve as the foundation for the entire lesson and provide a clear focus for teaching and learning. By ranking the objectives in terms of importance, instructors can prioritize what students need to know and understand by the end of the lesson. Clear and measurable objectives also ensure that students have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

Once the learning objectives are established, instructors should develop an introduction that gauges students’ prior knowledge and generates interest in the topic. This introduction sets the stage for the lesson and helps students connect their existing knowledge to new information. By activating prior knowledge and capturing students’ attention, instructors can create a foundation for effective learning.

After the introduction, it is important to plan specific learning activities that cater to different learning styles and engage students in the material. This could involve using various teaching strategies, such as group work, discussions, hands-on activities, or multimedia resources. By providing different ways of explaining the material and encouraging active participation, instructors can enhance student understanding and retention.

Checking for understanding is another crucial step in lesson planning. Instructors should plan how to assess student comprehension by asking specific questions and anticipating possible student responses. This allows educators to gauge whether students have grasped the material and identify any misconceptions that may need to be addressed. By regularly checking for understanding, instructors can adjust their teaching strategies and provide additional support as needed.

A well-designed lesson plan should also include a conclusion that summarizes the main points covered in the lesson and previews the next lesson. This helps students consolidate their learning and make connections between different concepts. By providing closure and a preview of what is to come, instructors can create a sense of continuity and cohesion in their teaching.

Creating a realistic timeline is an essential aspect of lesson planning. Instructors should allocate sufficient time for each activity, allowing for flexibility and adjustments based on students’ needs. A realistic timeline ensures that all objectives are covered within the allocated time frame and allows for necessary modifications to accommodate unexpected challenges or opportunities for deeper exploration.

Presenting the lesson plan to students is an important step in keeping them engaged and on track. By sharing the agenda and learning objectives at the beginning of the lesson, instructors provide students with a clear roadmap of what will be covered and what is expected of them. This helps students stay focused and motivated throughout the lesson.

Reflection is a critical component of effective lesson planning. After each class, instructors should take the time to reflect on the lesson plan, considering what worked well and what could be improved. This reflection allows for continuous improvement and adjustments to ensure that future lessons are even more effective in promoting student learning.

In conclusion, lesson planning is a fundamental tool for instructors to create a productive learning environment. By outlining clear objectives, planning engaging activities, and checking for understanding, educators can guide their teaching and ensure effective student learning. Presenting the lesson plan to students and reflecting on its effectiveness allows for continuous improvement and enhances the overall learning experience. A well-crafted lesson plan is a valuable resource that benefits both students and instructors, promoting a positive and productive learning environment.

The Key to Effective Teaching: Creating Engaging Lesson Plans

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The importance of lesson planning for student success.

Navigate the educational landscape and unlock the secrets to successful teaching with our blog on lesson planning for student success. Explore its significance to teachers and understand why a lesson plan is important in teaching. This comprehensive guide outlines the importance of lesson planning for teachers and provides valuable insights into creating well-structured plans that resonate with curriculum goals. Immerse yourself in strategic lesson planning for a transformative teaching experience that fosters student success and educator growth.

Lesson Planning Is Essential to Teaching

Any experienced teacher will tell you that lesson planning is a big part of the job. Teachers around the world routinely spend as much as half of their working time on non-teaching activities, and lesson planning accounts for much of that time. 1, 2

Lesson planning is how teachers synthesize the curriculum goals with pedagogy and knowledge of their specific teaching context. 3 Ask ten teachers about the benefits of lesson planning, and you might very well get ten unique answers. There are also different opinions about how far ahead a teacher should plan lessons. Some recommend working a week out, while others advocate planning a month ahead. 4, 5

In the end, though, creating successful learning outcomes for students is the goal. Although well-designed lesson plans take time and thought, it's an investment that can provide returns in many ways. Explore the elements to consider when creating lesson plans and what factors teachers can include in planning to assure success for themselves, their classrooms and, most importantly, their students.

The Many Reasons Why Lesson Planning Is Important

Effective lesson planning contributes to successful learning outcomes for students in several ways. A well-designed lesson plan:

• Helps students and teachers understand the goals of an instructional module
• Allows the teacher to translate the curriculum into learning activities
• Aligns the instructional materials with the assessment
• Aligns the assessment with the learning goal
• Helps assure that the needed instructional materials are available
• Enables the teacher to thoughtfully address individual learning needs among students

Effective lesson planning can also contribute to the teacher’s own success and well-being. Teachers teach because they want to support students, and effective lesson planning can contribute to job satisfaction when a lesson is successful or a student does well on an assessment. Having a skillfully-planned lesson can also make the act of teaching more pleasurable by increasing the teacher’s confidence in themselves and letting them focus more on interaction with the students than on what is supposed to happen next. Importantly, good planning can save time by avoiding last-minute efforts to buy supplies or create materials needed for a day in the classroom. Teachers can use that reclaimed time for themselves or other parts of their lives, increasing work-life balance.

The Importance of Lesson Planning to Effective Curriculum Delivery

“Curriculum” is a word with many meanings, depending on the context. At the most abstract level, curriculum theory addresses such different aspects of teaching as what elements are included in the course of study, along with considerations of how it is taught and tested. See “What Are the 8 Types of Curriculum?” for more on curriculum theory.

Some curricula are more detailed and structured than others. 6 Regardless of the level of detail, the importance of lesson planning is that it bridges the curriculum’s intent with the daily teaching and learning in a classroom. At a minimum, lesson planning adds the element of time, breaking the curriculum into units delivered each session. Usually, though, teachers incorporate their training and knowledge of their students into the task, translating a previously developed curriculum into an action plan for their classroom.

The Importance of Lesson Planning to Student Assessment

The lesson plan translates the curriculum into clear daily goals for student learning that include a description of the objective and a way to measure the student’s attainment of it. 7 A few standard measurement methods are tests, homework assignments and group work. One benefit of the lesson plan is fitting the assessment to the particular goal while accounting for your specific situation. Some educational writers argue that teachers should design the evaluation before designing the learning activities.4 Working outward from the central idea of the learning objective allows teachers flexibility in choosing the type of assessment that will best suit their students and the classroom environment.

Why Lesson Planning Is Important for Classroom Management

Building the lesson plan outward from your learning goals also offers much-needed flexibility in adapting instructional delivery and classroom management during uncertain times. Classes that move from onsite to online or hybrid require different delivery methods, requiring adjustments to existing plans. Such situations highlight the importance of lesson planning in keeping the class moving smoothly from task to task regardless of the learning environment. Advance lesson planning also minimizes the need for discipline and allows you to make the most of your time with students.

Better Lesson Planning Creates More Student Success

Student success and good behavior are more likely when your pupils are actively engaged in classwork. A thoroughly planned lesson facilitates that desirable state by considering unique student educational needs. “All successful teachers need to be pupil-focused; in other words, you have to think about how the learning activity you have set up will be experienced by each pupil, and how this experience will generate your intended learning outcomes.” 8

​​Better Lesson Planning Is Important for Teacher Success

Teacher success is predicated on student success. Beyond that, the documents you create as part of the planning process are usually part of your evaluation by school administrators. Therefore, having well-prepared and documented plans is an integral part of your success as a teacher. Your lesson plans also become a repository of your growing knowledge as you continue to teach. The importance of lesson planning in furthering your professional growth is undeniable. Cultivating good habits for preparing and reviewing your lesson plans prepares the ground for your success.

• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/5js64kndz1f3-en.pdf?expires=1642704108&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=793A8F13FA53BD6FF0680CA7F2DDD448
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from businessinsider.com/teachers-time-spent-after-school-work-2019-10#planning-lessons-can-take-several-hours-a-week-4
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from tesol.org/docs/default-source/books/14002_lesson-planning_ch-1
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from edutopia.org/blog/9-ways-plan-transformational-lessons-todd-finley
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, blog.planbook.com/lesson-plan-classroom-management/
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from https://www.edglossary.org/curriculum/
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from edutopia.org/article/how-universal-design-learning-can-help-lesson-planning-year
• Retrieved on January 20, 2022, from educationblog.oup.com/secondary/english/why-is-planning-so-important-for-effective-teaching

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What is a Lesson Objective?

When planning lessons, GOALS  describe the lesson’s summative outcomes (where students will go) and the OBJECTIVES describe how students will get there.

Include SMART attributes when writing objectives:

S-Specific:   Concise, well-defined statements of what students will know, understand, and be able to do at the end of the lesson.  The objective should state  exactly   what is to be accomplished by the student and the conditions in place, such as, “Given a topic on American history”,  “Provided with a calculator and a three minute time limit”, or “Independently, following the five-step scientific method”.

Learning outcomes should be simply stated in student-centered terms.  If students are aware of the intended outcome, then they know where their focus should lie.  This clarity helps decrease anxiety about their ability to succeed and helps build intrinsic motivation.

M-Measurable:   Learning objectives must be quantifiable.  Measurable objectives state the outcomes that can be assessed in definite and specific ways; the quality or level of performance that will be considered acceptable (mastery level).  The criterion can be expressed by describing the performance standard to be met, such as, “Write a descriptive paragraph that includes a topic sentence, three supporting detail sentences, and a closing sentence.”  When writing mastery level, you often begin with the word “with”, then add description, such as “90% accuracy”, “no errors”, “appropriate punctuation” or “accurate vocabulary”.

Start with behavioral verbs (action verbs) that can be observed (either informally or formally) and measured.  Using concrete verbs will help keep your objectives clear and concise. Bloom’s Taxonomy provides a list of such verbs and these are categorized according to the level of achievement at which students should be performing.

While the verbs above clearly distinguish the action that should be performed, there are verbs to avoid when writing a learning objective. The following verbs are too vague or difficult to measure: appreciate, cover, realize, be aware of, familiarize, study, become acquainted with, gain knowledge of, comprehend, know, learn, understand, learn.

A-Attainable:  Learning objectives should be written at the appropriate developmental level for student success.  It is essential that students have the pre-requisite knowledge and skills and that the lesson’s time frame supports achievement of the objective.  You can determine the appropriate level of challenge by referring to pre assessment results.  Learning activities should be challenging, yet offer students a realistic chance to master the objective.

R-Relevant:    The skills or knowledge described must be appropriate for the grade level and subject area or an individual’s IEP goals. The process of setting learning objectives begins with knowing the specific standards, benchmarks, and supporting knowledge students in your school or district are required to learn.  Common Core State Standards and curriculum documents are the source for this information.  This is essential to ensure students receive the same important content from teacher to teacher.

T-Time-bound:   Time-bound – State when students should be able to demonstrate the skill (“By the end of the lesson” , etc.).

Note: As you complete your clinical experiences, it will be expected that written lesson objectives present all of the attributes of a SMART Goal.  You may write more than one lesson objective for a single lesson as a result of grouping your students in response to their needs.  Determination of the need for more than one objective will be the result of your analysis of students’ current performance (formative assessment).

SMART GOAL EXAMPLES

• After reading the book “Life in the Rainforest” and participating in a class discussion, students will accurately identify three specific similarities and three specific differences of plants and animals as demonstrated through written completion of a Venn diagram.
• At the conclusion of this lesson and following class discussion, students will accurately present, in writing or explanation with illustrations, three roles of local government and the responsibilities of each.
• After two lessons on the pattern of digestion, students will accurately identify, in writing, the digestive function of each area of the alimentary digestive system as demonstrated in a student generated labeled diagram.

(Center for Educational Resources – John Hopkins University, The Innovative Instructor Blog-Marcia Hall, July 2016;  Designing Lessons for the Diverse Classroom, Bureau of Instructional Support and Community Services, Division of Public Schools and Community Education, Florida Department of Education)

Additional examples:

• Following this 30 minute lesson, provided with 5 index cards containing two-syllable nonsense words ending with the “consonant-le” syllable pattern, students will correctly read at least 4 of the 5 words without visually marking them.
• By the end of two lessons on bullying, students will correctly explain the difference between a bully and a friend.  Students will have a choice of writing a short paragraph that includes a thesis statement and call to action or providing an oral presentation that includes a thesis statement and call to action.
• At the conclusion of this lesson on measuring volume,  in which students will work in pairs to measure the volume of a cone, sphere, and cylinder, students will individually measure the volume of each correctly.  Students will choose one object of each shape from a variety of everyday objects, correctly identify each shape, and choose the correct formula for measuring as well as label each measurement accurately.

Measurable Objectives in the CPS Lesson Plan

Section 1a calls for a lesson goal/objective, an introductory criteria to lesson planning.  As discussed above, this lesson goal should be written as a SMART goal and clearly articulate what students should know and/or be able to do at the end of the lesson.

In subsequent lessons, this objective will be revised and adapted based on evidenced student progress toward the objective.  In other words, students who master the objective move on to more complex and/or new skills in subsequent lessons.  Others who are unable to demonstrate mastery yet might continue to target this lesson objective in upcoming small group lesson activities that provide remediation and support.

The best lesson objectives require that students utilize higher order/deep thought processes.  Goals that target learning (versus completion) are more likely to be connected to quality learning experiences that stretch students’ thinking, foster self-reflection, and encourage transfer of skills.  Lesson objectives that are learning oriented (EX:  “Students will accurately describe four cause and effect relationships” vs “Students will accurately answer four of five comprehension questions”) focus on the actual skill that the lesson objective targets.

CPS’s Aligned Lesson Plan Section

Cps’s aligned loft evaluation criteria and aligned annotation, cps’s aligned lesson plan rubric criteria,    gsc’s, standards, curricular goals, and iep goal.

As stated above, Common Core State Standards or, as necessary, curriculum documents are referred to when planning lessons.  The lesson objective is the appropriate ‘next step’ in moving towards mastery of a standard or goal.  While more than one standard may be addressed by an objective, identifying one is sufficient.  This must be a standard in the subject area in which the lesson is being taught.  For example, if you are teaching a science lesson, note a science standard you are specifically addressing.

CPS’s Aligned LOFT Evaluation Criteria and Annotations

Essential questions.

State the ‘big understanding’ your lesson is targeting.  Identify the reason this lesson is important in real life, outside of the classroom.  This should be a higher level thinking question that presents the ‘why’ of the lesson.  Essential questions are not answerable with finality in a single lesson or a brief sentence. Their aim is to stimulate   thought , to provoke inquiry , and to spark more questions .

• How do we identify patterns and use them to predict what will happen next?
• When and why should we estimate?
• What are all of the ways to represent a number?
• How does what we measure influence how we measure?
• How can you use equations to solve real-world problems?
• How should governments balance the rights of individuals with the common good?
• How do we overcome prejudice and social bias?
• What is worth fighting for?
• What can we learn from the past?
• What remains the same?
• What strategies can you use to make writing come alive for a reader?
• What do good readers do, especially when they don’t recognize a word?
• How does  what  I am reading influence  how  I should read it?
• What impact does fluency have on comprehension?
• How does word choice affect meaning?
• How do we create, test, and validate a scientific model?
• When and how do scientific theories change?
• How are structure and function related in living things?
• Why are scientists concerned with cause and effect?
• How can we determine what is truly “real” and what is not?

Essential Questions by Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins, ASCD 2013

Lesson Planning 101 Copyright © 2019 by Deborah Kolling and Kate Shumway-Pitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Assignments Matter: Making the Connections That Help Students Meet Standards

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What exactly is an "assignment" and why does it matter? How can educators ensure that their teaching meets the rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards, so that all students are well prepared for college or careers?

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A Simple Tool to Help With Lesson Planning and Post-Lesson Reflection

The practice picker checklist provides a framework that teachers can use to help make sure their lesson plans are effective.

We’ve all been there: sitting at our desk looking at a blank unit plan, a mountain of competencies, student-learning objectives, curriculum expectations, assessment results, individualized education programs, and a whole host of other must-dos that feel overwhelming or maybe even impossible! There are a lot of things we have to consider when planning lessons, and no one wants to accidentally leave out anything important.

It can be incredibly daunting to tackle all these expectations and keep best teaching practices in mind, which is why we were inspired by The Checklist Manifesto , by Atul Gawande . His book examines how small, systematic changes could reduce errors in surgeries. Gawande looked to other fields, primarily the aviation industry, and discovered that checklists significantly improved safety and performance.

So, we wondered, can educators use the checklist process to help us climb that huge mountain of must-dos? We think the practice picker checklist makes explicit the inquisitive and reflective habits of mind for purposeful lesson planning that educators want to use when trying a new teaching practice—to basically streamline that mountain of must-dos into a manageable, time-saving checklist.

The practice picker checklist consists of nine simple yes-or-no questions that educators can use to determine if a practice might be effective for their students.

In trying to create our practice picker checklist, we did a lot of research on best practices, equity-based instruction and assessment, active-learning strategies, and student engagement. We synthesized the advice and research into four main categories.

The Core Four

1. Student centered. A student-centered practice ensures that the learners are actively engaged in the experience. The students need to be doing the heavy lifting rather than sitting passively. This practice could look like a discussion, an inquiry-based assignment, a group project, or another opportunity for students to choose how they display their knowledge. Ultimately, students are at the heart of the practice.

2. Relevance. A big piece of our research into best practices revealed that when students feel like what they are learning at school is important and relevant to their lives, they are more engaged.

It makes sense that our students would feel more connected to a topic if they could see how it would help them pursue their interests and goals, understand their community better, and show them how to influence their world in meaningful ways. That sounds really lofty, but by focusing on essential skills like problem-solving, decision-making, and communication, lessons can be immediately applicable to their lives.

3. Insightful thinking. Insightful thinking provides a novel project or idea in a unit. Insightful thinking also takes into account the varied perspectives of the student population within that classroom. The practice picker helps us evaluate if a practice provides opportunities for students to think deeply about the concept/topic for the lesson rather than a comprehension activity.

4. Universality. This comes from our belief that good teaching is good teaching no matter who, or what, you are teaching! Meaning, the best teaching practices work regardless of the grade level or the content area you’re working with. The beauty of best practices is that they work universally because they fit with what we know about human curiosity, motivation, and growth.

Using the Practice Picker Checklist

There are multiple scenarios where the practice picker could help us all take our lessons to the next level.

Lesson planning. As we have spent time reworking a lesson, the practice picker helps us sift through activities and practices for our current students. The checklist takes out the guesswork and allows us to objectively examine elements within a lesson. The checklist allows us to be objective as we critique a lesson and provides a more time-efficient collaboration process.

Post-lesson reflection. Sometimes we try a new lesson and feel mixed about the results. After a lesson has concluded, a checklist is helpful for evaluating its effectiveness and helps us investigate why the lesson did or didn’t work. This process provides a way to discuss a lesson objectively and ensure that the most accurate practice is being used for the current students’ needs. It also ensures that we use the same set of categories to drive the choices made in our classroom.

Scoring: What do all these checks mean?

When using the practice picker checklist, there is no magic number to indicate that the practice is definitely going to work. A practice certainly does not have to be a “yes” in all categories to still be a good practice for your students. However, it can help to look at it holistically:

• Lots of checks in the “yes” category—that’s usually a pretty good sign! That would be a good indication that it’s worth trying out with your students to see how it goes.
• A lot of checks in the “no” category—that doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to be a disaster but might indicate that the activity has to be tweaked to fit the group of students you have in front of you. Sometimes it’s worth putting in the time to make those changes, but sometimes it’s not, and you have to trust your professional judgment to see if you want to put the time and effort into improving it.
• An even mix of checks in “yes” and “no” categories—if that happens, we suggest that you weigh the importance of each item against each other. You can ask, “Is this ‘yes’ more important in this moment than that ‘no’?”

Reflecting Makes Us Stronger

Education is an art, and this practice picker doesn’t eliminate the importance of listening to our “teacher gut.” However, a teacher may find that their “gut” is really an implicitly collected set of observations similar to this practice picker we’ve compiled.

This checklist takes what we, as educators, do intuitively and makes the process explicit and manageable for lesson planning, collaborating, and reflective practice. Ultimately, we all want what’s best for our students and to tackle as much of “must-do mountain” as possible. We hope that the practice picker helps you do just that!

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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).

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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The Four Main Parts of a Lesson Plan Made Simple

by Brad Melsby – updated January 23, 2024

What Is a Lesson Plan and Why Do You Need One?

The world of education is full of (too) many lesson plan templates and styles.  As you develop as a teacher, you’ll naturally grow into a more detailed lesson plan format.  Your school or district may require a different format or style of lesson plan.  Whatever your situation, it’s most useful for newer teachers to focus on the four main parts of a lesson plan.  These four elements are essential to your early success in the classroom. 

Your lesson plan is the roadmap for how the class period will be organized.  In the lesson plan, you identify what will be taught, how it will be taught, and by what method you plan to see if students learned it.  Without a structured lesson plan, a class period can quickly lose focus or direction.

In this article, we’ll focus on the four main parts of a lesson plan.

Lesson Planning Simplified: The Four Main Parts of a Lesson Plan

Key component #1: identify the learning objectives.

Ask yourself: What new concepts, knowledge, or skills do I want my students to learn today?  

When I chat with new teachers about how their class is going, I sometimes hear them say, “We’re doing the Roman Empire right now” or “We’re doing fractions today.”   I get that the word “doing” in this context is just an expression.  

But I also remember the realities of being a new teacher.  In my first year or two, my goal was to “fill the period” with academic activities.  Surely if we are doing something, the kids will learn.  Right?  

“Doing” does not necessarily mean learning.

For many new teachers, a major evolution is to start thinking like an educator.  That means you can identify the learning objective(s) in your lesson.

Check out the sample learning objectives below. Notice how the addition of learning objectives shifts the focus away from the topic (“We’re doing the Roman Empire”) to the students and their skill acquisition.     

Here are a few sample learning objectives:

• At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify and explain six causes of World War II.
• By the end of the lesson, students will be able to apply the rules of the Order of Operations to evaluate algebraic expressions.
• Students will be able to categorize types of animals into the correct classes with a graphic organizer.
• By the end of the reading lesson, students will be able to identify the rising action, climax, and falling action on a plot diagram.

Learning objectives force the teacher to think strategically.  How can you best support the students in achieving the objective? What instructional or learning activities will best fit the objective?  Clear learning objectives are arguably the most important part of a lesson.

Key Component # 2: The Lesson “Hook”

Ask yourself: How will I introduce the topic? How can I get students interested in the topic?

A lesson introduction should:

• Provide brief context and background information on the topic while engaging interest
• Create excitement or interest.  Compel the class to want to know more about the topic
• Explain the relevance of the topic to the larger unit or course 
• Provide a clear link between today’s objectives and the student’s prior knowledge

Your students likely possess a wide variety of personal experiences and knowledge.  As a result, it’s helpful to use the introduction to gauge prior knowledge or misconceptions about the topic. 

A few strategies for introducing the lesson:

Tell a personal story, analyze a relevant image or song, watch a video clip, provide a real-world connection or example, or present a probing challenge or question. 

Key Component #3 : The Learning Activities

Ask yourself: What will the students do to achieve the lesson objective?  

In a general sense, the learning activities can be divided into two parts: Guided Practice and Individual/Group Practice.  This is sometimes referred to as the gradual release of responsibility method: I Do, We Do, You Do.

Guided Practice (I Do, We Do): Here, the teacher explains and models the learning activity while answering clarifying questions.  Guided practice then allows students to participate in the learning activity under supervision and with direct feedback from the instructor.  

From a teacher’s perspective, guided practice is a key form of formative assessment.  Teachers use guided practice to determine whether students are ready to complete the activity without scaffolded support.  

Individual/Group Practice (You do):  Students complete the learning activity.  In guided practice, students learn with the steady support of the teacher.  Individual/group practice is the time for students to demonstrate proficiency on their own.  Independent practice can include homework assignments.   

Key Component #4 : Assessment and Closure

Ask yourself : How can I know if the students have met the learning objective of the lesson?

Lesson closure gives teachers the chance to briefly conduct one final review of the lesson and check to ensure that the intended student learning has occurred.

Go back to your original lesson objectives.  Create questions to ask students that address your learning goals.  You can place those questions on a homework assignment, an exit ticket, a quiz, or simply ask the questions in the form of a discussion.

Teachers use the assessment from today’s lesson to inform tomorrow’s lesson plan . 

What questions or confusion came up that need clarification? What if anything do I need to reteach?  What key concepts from today’s lesson will be useful to build on during tomorrow’s lesson?

Helpful Resource:

Set of 70 Metacognitive Question Prompts

Looking for a creative and thoughtful way to close out a lesson? Try asking metacognitive questions.  Besides being a useful formative assessment to find out what your students know, metacognition is an opportunity for students to self-manage their learning and deepen their thinking.

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Brad has taught history at the middle and high school levels for 19 years, almost exclusively in American public schools.  He holds a master’s in educational technology and is passionate about elevating the status of professional educators.

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TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 8: Effective Lesson Planning

Planning ahead to identify a course of action that can effectively help learners reach their goals and objectives is an important first step in effective instruction. Lesson planning communicates to learners what they will learn and how their goals will be assessed, and it helps instructors organize content, materials, time, instructional strategies, and assistance in the classroom.

About Effective Lesson Planning

Planning ahead to identify a course of action that can effectively reach goals and objectives is an important first step in any process, and education is no exception. In education, the planning tool is the lesson plan, which is a detailed description of an instructor’s course of instruction for an individual lesson intended to help learners achieve a particular learning objective. Lesson plans communicate to learners what they will learn and how they will be assessed, and they help instructors organize content, materials, time, instructional strategies, and assistance in the classroom. Lesson planning helps English as a second language (ESL), adult basic education (ABE), adult secondary education (ASE), and other instructors create a smooth instructional flow and scaffold instruction for learners.

The Lesson Planning Process

Before the actual delivery of a lesson, instructors engage in a planning process. During this process, they determine the lesson topic (if states have implemented content standards, the topic should derive from them). From the topic, derive the lesson objective or desired results —the concepts and ideas that learners are expected to develop and the specific knowledge and skills that learners are expected to acquire and use at the end of the lesson. Objectives are critical to effective instruction because they help instructors plan the instructional strategies and activities they will use, including the materials and resources to support learning. It is essential that the objective be clear and describe the intended learning outcome. Objectives can communicate to learners what is expected of them—but only if they are shared with learners in an accessible manner. Instructional objectives must be specific, outcome-based, and measurable, and they must describe learner behavior. Heinich, Molenda, Russell, and Smaldino (2001) refer to the ABCD ’s of writing objectives:

• A udience – learners for whom the objective is written (e.g., ESL, ABE, GED)
• B ehavior – the verb that describes what the audience will be able to do (e.g., describe, explain, locate, synthesize, argue, communicate)
• C ondition – the circumstances under which the audience will perform the behavior (e.g., when a learner obtains medicine from the pharmacy, he or she will be able to read the dosage)
• D egree – acceptable performance of the behavior (i.e., how well the learner performs the behavior)

Learner assessment follows from the objectives. Based on the principles of backward design developed by Wiggins and McTighe (1998), instructors identify the lesson objective or desired results and then decide what they will accept as evidence of learners’ knowledge and skills. The concept of backward design holds that the instructor must begin with the end in mind (i.e., what the student should be able to know, understand, or do) and then map backward from the desired result to the current time and the students’ current ability/skill levels to determine the best way to reach the performance goal.

The WIPPEA Model for Lesson Planning

The WIPPEA Model, an acronym that stands for W arm-up, I ntroduction, P resentation, P ractice, E valuation, A pplication, is a lesson plan model that represents a continuous teaching cycle in which each learning concept builds on the previous one, serving as an instructional roadmap for instructors. The WIPPEA lesson plan model is adapted from the work of Hunter (Hunter, 1982). This six-step cyclical lesson planning approach has learners demonstrate mastery of concepts and content at each step before the instructor proceeds to the next step. In the following list, TEAL Center suggestions for incorporating each of these elements are included in italics.

Warm-up – Assesses prior knowledge by reviewing previous materials relevant to the current lesson. Introduce an activity that reviews previously learned content (e.g., for a vocabulary lesson, the warm-up may be a quick matching exercise with words previously learned and their definitions), and also include an activity that focuses on the topic to be taught.

Introduction – Provides a broad overview of the content and concepts to be taught and focuses the learners’ attention on the new lesson. Introduce the purpose of the lesson by stating and writing the objectives for learners and discussing the lesson content and benefits by relating the objective to learners’ own lives. Assess learners’ prior knowledge of the new material by asking questions and writing learners’ responses on a chalkboard or flip chart.

Presentation – Teaches the lesson content and concepts. Create an activity to introduce the concept or skill (e.g., introduce new vocabulary by asking learners to work in groups to identify words related to taking medications) and then introduce information through a variety of modalities using visuals, realia, description, explanation, and written text. Check for learner understanding of the new material and make changes in lesson procedures if necessary.

Practice – Models the skills and provides opportunities for guided practice. Introduce a variety of activities that allow learners to work in groups, in pairs, or independently to practice the skills, concepts, and information presented. Integrate technology into activities as available.

Evaluation – Assesses each learner’s attainment of the objective. Include oral, aural, written, or applied performance assessments. For example, ask learners to fill in the blanks on a cloze activity using the four medicine warning labels that were discussed in class. For lower level learners, provide a word bank at the bottom of the worksheet. Omit the word bank for more advanced students.

Application – Provides activities that help learners apply their learning to new situations or contexts beyond the lesson and connect it to their own lives. Choose activities that learners can relate to or have expressed concern about. For example, have learners read the label of a medication they or a family member may use at home to make certain they understand the meaning of the words on the label. Gather feedback from learners in follow-up classes and help them assess what additional support, if any, they may require.

The following graphic integrates the WIPPEA process with backward design in a lesson planning wheel. In this cyclical approach, teachers assess prior knowledge, provide a broad overview of the content/concepts to be taught, introduce vocabulary, teach content/concepts, check comprehension, combine the content and vocabulary through guided practice, evaluate student performance, and provide an application activity. Instructional strategies vary depending on the lesson content and skill areas and the needs of the learners.

Planning for differentiated instruction requires various learner profiles to inform the process (See TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 5. on Differentiated Instruction). Students demonstrate mastery of concepts/content in each step before the teacher proceeds to the next step.

The relationship of the objective to the evaluation keeps the lesson focused and drives instruction. By keeping the end in mind (backward design) and creating the evaluation activity at the beginning of the lesson, the teacher has a clear destination for the lesson and a roadmap to get there. Instructors can then select materials and activities that will best prepare students to successfully complete the evaluation activity in the lesson. The process is repeated for each learning objective. Lesson planning is an ongoing process in which instruction flows from one objective to the next. This cyclical process is repeated for each learning objective.

How Does Lesson Planning Benefit Learners and Instructors?

Instructors and learners benefit from thoughtful lesson planning. It provides a framework for instruction, and it guides implementation of standards-based education. Lesson planning establishes a road map for instructors of what has been taught and what needs to be taught. It allows them to focus on one objective at a time and communicate to learners what they will learn in each lesson. Because lessons incorporate ongoing assessments that determine how well learners understand concepts and skills, instructors are able to make mid-course changes in instructional procedures or provide additional support to learners. Additionally, the practice and application components of the lesson help learners use the new skills and knowledge in educational and other settings, thus promoting generalization and relevance.

Barroso, K., & Pon, S. (2005). Effective lesson planning, A facilitator’s guide . Sacramento, CA: California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, American Institutes for Research.

Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J., & Smaldino, S. (2001). Instructional media and technologies for learning (7th ed). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hunter, M. (1982). Mastery teaching . El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design . Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Authors: TEAL Center Staff

Adapted from CALPRO Professional Development Module, Effective Lesson Planning, by Barroso, K. & Pon, S. (2004). AIR: Sacramento, CA.

About the TEAL Center: The Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL) Center is a project of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), designed to improve the quality of teaching in adult education in the content areas.

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Designing Assessments of Student Learning

Image Hollie Nyseth Brehm, ​​​​​Associate Professor, Department of Sociology  Professor Hollie Nyseth Brehm was a graduate student the first time she taught a class, “I didn’t have any training on how to teach, so I assigned a final paper and gave them instructions: ‘Turn it in at the end of course.’ That was sort of it.” Brehm didn’t have a rubric or a process to check in with students along the way. Needless to say, the assignment didn’t lead to any major breakthroughs for her students. But it was a learning experience for Brehm. As she grew her teaching skills, she began to carefully craft assignments to align to course goals, make tasks realistic and meaningful, and break down large assignments into manageable steps. "Now I always have rubrics. … I always scaffold the assignment such that they’ll start by giving me their paper topic and a couple of sources and then turn in a smaller portion of it, and we write it in pieces. And that leads to a much better learning experience for them—and also for me, frankly, when I turn to grade it .”

Reflect  

Have you ever planned a big assignment that didn’t turn out as you’d hoped? What did you learn, and how would you design that assignment differently now? 

What are students learning in your class? Are they meeting your learning outcomes? You simply cannot answer these questions without assessment of some kind.

As educators, we measure student learning through many means, including assignments, quizzes, and tests. These assessments can be formal or informal, graded or ungraded. But assessment is not simply about awarding points and assigning grades. Learning is a process, not a product, and that process takes place during activities such as recall and practice. Assessing skills in varied ways helps you adjust your teaching throughout your course to support student learning

Research tells us that our methods of assessment don’t only measure how much students have learned. They also play an important role in the learning process. A phenomenon known as the “testing effect” suggests students learn more from repeated testing than from repeated exposure to the material they are trying to learn (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). While exposure to material, such as during lecture or study, helps students store new information, it’s crucial that students actively practice retrieving that information and putting it to use. Frequent assessment throughout a course provides students with the practice opportunities that are essential to learning.

In addition we can’t assume students can transfer what they have practiced in one context to a different context. Successful transfer of learning requires understanding of deep, structural features and patterns that novices to a subject are still developing (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). If we want students to be able to apply their learning in a wide variety of contexts, they must practice what they’re learning in a wide variety of contexts .

Providing a variety of assessment types gives students multiple opportunities to practice and demonstrate learning. One way to categorize the range of assessment options is as formative or summative.

Formative and Summative Assessment

Opportunities not simply to practice, but to receive feedback on that practice, are crucial to learning (Ambrose et al., 2010). Formative assessment facilitates student learning by providing frequent low-stakes practice coupled with immediate and focused feedback. Whether graded or ungraded, formative assessment helps you monitor student progress and guide students to understand which outcomes they’ve mastered, which they need to focus on, and what strategies can support their learning. Formative assessment also informs how you modify your teaching to better meet student needs throughout your course.

Technology Tip

Design quizzes in CarmenCanvas to provide immediate and useful feedback to students based on their answers. Learn more about setting up quizzes in Carmen. 

Summative assessment measures student learning by comparing it to a standard. Usually these types of assessments evaluate a range of skills or overall performance at the end of a unit, module, or course. Unlike formative assessment, they tend to focus more on product than process. These high-stakes experiences are typically graded and should be less frequent (Ambrose et al., 2010).

Using Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a common framework for thinking about how students can demonstrate their learning on assessments, as well as for articulating course and lesson learning outcomes .

Benjamin Bloom (alongside collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl) published Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956.   The taxonomy provided a system for categorizing educational goals with the intent of aiding educators with assessment. Commonly known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, the framework has been widely used to guide and define instruction in both K-12 and university settings. The original taxonomy from 1956 included a cognitive domain made up of six categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The categories after Knowledge were presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice. 

A revised Bloom's Taxonomy from 2001 updated these six categories to reflect how learners interact with knowledge. In the revised version, students can:  Remember content, Understand ideas, Apply information to new situations, Analyze relationships between ideas, Evaluate information to justify perspectives or decisions, and Create new ideas or original work. In the graphic pictured here, the categories from the revised taxonomy are imagined as the layers of a cake.

Assessing students on a variety of Bloom's categories will give you a better sense of how well they understand your course content. The taxonomy can be a helpful guide to predicting which tasks will be most difficult for students so you can provide extra support where it is needed. It can also be used to craft more transparent assignments and test questions by honing in on the specific skills you want to assess and finding the right language to communicate exactly what you want students to do.  See the Sample Bloom's Verbs in the Examples section below.

Diving deeper into Bloom's Taxonomy

Like most aspects of our lives, activities and assessments in today’s classroom are inextricably linked with technology. In 2008, Andrew Churches extended Bloom’s Taxonomy to address the emerging changes in learning behaviors and opportunities as “technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous.” Consult Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy for ideas on using digital tools to facilitate and assess learning across the six categories of learning.

Did you know that the cognitive domain (commonly referred to simply as Bloom's Taxonomy) was only one of three domains in the original Bloom's Taxonomy (1956)? While it is certainly the most well-known and widely used, the other two domains— psychomotor and affective —may be of interest to some educators. The psychomotor domain relates to physical movement, coordination, and motor skills—it might apply to the performing arts or other courses that involve movement, manipulation of objects, and non-discursive communication like body language. The affective domain pertains to feelings, values, motivations, and attitudes and is used more often in disciplines like medicine, social work, and education, where emotions and values are integral aspects of learning. Explore the full taxonomy in  Three Domains of Learning: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor (Hoque, 2017).

In Practice

Consider the following to make your assessments of student learning effective and meaningful.

Align assignments, quizzes, and tests closely to learning outcomes.

It goes without saying that you want students to achieve the learning outcomes for your course. The testing effect implies, then, that your assessments must help them retrieve the knowledge and practice the skills that are relevant to those outcomes.

Plan assessments that measure specific outcomes for your course. Instead of choosing quizzes and tests that are easy to grade or assignment types common to your discipline, carefully consider what assessments will best help students practice important skills. When assignments and feedback are aligned to learning outcomes, and you share this alignment with students, they have a greater appreciation for your course and develop more effective strategies for study and practice targeted at achieving those outcomes (Wang, et al., 2013).

Provide authentic learning experiences.

Consider how far removed from “the real world” traditional assessments like academic essays, standard textbook problems, and multiple-choice exams feel to students. In contrast, assignments that are authentic resemble real-world tasks. They feel relevant and purposeful, which can increase student motivation and engagement (Fink, 2013). Authentic assignments also help you assess whether students will be able to transfer what they learn into realistic contexts beyond your course.

Integrate assessment opportunities that prepare students to be effective and successful once they graduate, whether as professionals, as global citizens, or in their personal lives.

To design authentic assignments:

• Choose real-world content . If you want students to be able to apply disciplinary methods, frameworks, and terminology to solve real-world problems after your course, you must have them engage with real-world examples, procedures, and tools during your course. Include actual case studies, documents, data sets, and problems from your field in your assessments.
• Target a real-world audience . Ask students to direct their work to a tangible reader, listener or viewer, rather than to you. For example, they could write a blog for their peers or create a presentation for a future employer.
• Use real-world formats . Have students develop content in formats used in professional or real-life discourse. For example, instead of a conventional paper, students could write an email to a colleague or a letter to a government official, develop a project proposal or product pitch for a community-based company, post a how-to video on YouTube, or create an infographic to share on social media.

Simulations, role plays, case studies, portfolios, project-based learning, and service learning are all great avenues to bring authentic assessment into your course.

Make sure assignments are achievable.

Your students juggle coursework from several classes, so it’s important to be conscious of workload. Assign tasks they can realistically handle at a given point in the term. If it takes you three hours to do something, it will likely take your students six hours or more. Choose assignments that assess multiple learning outcomes from your course to keep your grading manageable and your feedback useful (Rayner et al., 2016).

Scaffold assignments so students can develop knowledge and skills over time.

For large assignments, use scaffolding to integrate multiple opportunities for feedback, reflection, and improvement. Scaffolding means breaking a complex assignment down into component parts or smaller progressive tasks over time. Practicing these smaller tasks individually before attempting to integrate them into a completed assignment supports student learning by reducing the amount of information they need to process at a given time (Salden et al., 2006).

Scaffolding ensures students will start earlier and spend more time on big assignments. And it provides you more opportunities to give feedback and guidance to support their ultimate success. Additionally, scaffolding can draw students’ attention to important steps in a process that are often overlooked, such as planning and revision, leading them to be more independent and thoughtful about future work.

A familiar example of scaffolding is a research paper. You might ask students to submit a topic or thesis in Week 3 of the semester, an annotated bibliography of sources in Week 6, a detailed outline in Week 9, a first draft on which they can get peer feedback in Week 11, and the final draft in the last week of the semester.

Your course journey is decided in part by how you sequence assignments. Consider where students are in their learning and place assignments at strategic points throughout the term. Scaffold across the course journey by explaining how each assignment builds upon the learning achieved in previous ones (Walvoord & Anderson, 2011). 

Be transparent about assignment instructions and expectations. 

Communicate clearly to students about the purpose of each assignment, the process for completing the task, and the criteria you will use to evaluate it before they begin the work. Studies have shown that transparent assignments support students to meet learning goals and result in especially large increases in success and confidence for underserved students (Winkelmes et al., 2016).

To increase assignment transparency:

• Explain how the assignment links to one or more course learning outcomes . Understanding why the assignment matters and how it supports their learning can increase student motivation and investment in the work.
• Outline steps of the task in the assignment prompt . Clear directions help students structure their time and effort. This is also a chance to call out disciplinary standards with which students are not yet familiar or guide them to focus on steps of the process they often neglect, such as initial research.
• Provide a rubric with straightforward evaluation criteria . Rubrics make transparent which parts of an assignment you care most about. Sharing clear criteria sets students up for success by giving them the tools to self-evaluate and revise their work before submitting it. Be sure to explain your rubric, and particularly to unpack new or vague terms; for example, language like "argue," “close reading,” "list significant findings," and "document" can mean different things in different disciplines. It is helpful to show exemplars and non-exemplars along with your rubric to highlight differences in unacceptable, acceptable, and exceptional work.

Engage students in reflection or discussion to increase assignment transparency. Have them consider how the assessed outcomes connect to their personal lives or future careers. In-class activities that ask them to grade sample assignments and discuss the criteria they used, compare exemplars and non-exemplars, engage in self- or peer-evaluation, or complete steps of the assignment when you are present to give feedback can all support student success.

Technology Tip   

Enter all  assignments and due dates  in your Carmen course to increase transparency. When assignments are entered in Carmen, they also populate to Calendar, Syllabus, and Grades areas so students can easily track their upcoming work. Carmen also allows you to  develop rubrics  for every assignment in your course. 

Sample Bloom’s Verbs

Building a question bank, using the transparent assignment template, sample assignment: ai-generated lesson plan.

Include frequent low-stakes assignments and assessments throughout your course to provide the opportunities for practice and feedback that are essential to learning. Consider a variety of formative and summative assessment types so students can demonstrate learning in multiple ways. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to determine—and communicate—the specific skills you want to assess.

Remember that effective assessments of student learning are:

• Aligned to course learning outcomes
• Authentic, or resembling real-world tasks
• Achievable and realistic
• Scaffolded so students can develop knowledge and skills over time
• Transparent in purpose, tasks, and criteria for evaluation
• Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty (book)
• Cheating Lessons (book)
• Minds online: Teaching effectively with technology (book)
• Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning (video)
• TILT Higher Ed Examples and Resource (website)
• Writing to Learn: Critical Thinking Activities for Any Classroom (guide)

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., Lovett, M.C., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M.K. (2010).  How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching . John Wiley & Sons. 

Barnett, S.M., & Ceci, S.J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer.  Psychological Bulletin , 128 (4). 612–637.  doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612  

Bransford, J.D, & Schwartz, D.L. (1999). Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implications.  Review of Research in Education , 24 . 61–100.  doi.org/10.3102/0091732X024001061  

Fink, L. D. (2013).  Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses . John Wiley & Sons. 

Karpicke, J.D., & Roediger, H.L., III. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning.  Science ,  319 . 966–968.  doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408  

Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help?.  Psychological Science in the Public Interest ,  17 (1), 4-34.  doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267     

Salden, R.J.C.M., Paas, F., van Merriënboer, J.J.G. (2006). A comparison of approaches to learning task selection in the training of complex cognitive skills.  Computers in Human Behavior , 22 (3). 321–333.  doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.06.003  

Walvoord, B. E., & Anderson, V. J. (2010).  Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment in college . John Wiley & Sons. 

Wang, X., Su, Y., Cheung, S., Wong, E., & Kwong, T. (2013). An exploration of Biggs’ constructive alignment in course design and its impact on students’ learning approaches.  Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education , 38 (4). 477–491.  doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.06.003  

Winkelmes, M., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K.H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students’ success.  Peer Review , 18 (1/2). 31–36. Retrieved from  https://www.aacu.org/peerreview/2016/winter-spring/Winkelmes

Related Teaching Topics

A positive approach to academic integrity, creating and adapting assignments for online courses, ai teaching strategies: transparent assignment design, designing research or inquiry-based assignments, using backward design to plan your course, universal design for learning: planning with all students in mind, search for resources.

Why Are Lesson Plans Important for Teachers? (17 Reasons)

For those shaping minds in the classroom, lesson plans are the daily bread, the quintessential ingredient that transforms a jumble of ideas into an orderly feast of knowledge. These plans are teachers’ silent allies, offering a scaffold to the sometimes unpredictable world of teaching.

But is there more to these plans than checkboxes and timelines? Could the humble lesson plan hold the key to transformative education? Join me as we peel back the layers and reveal the compelling reasons why lesson plans are indispensable to every teacher’s craft.

Lesson Plans Help in Setting Clear Objectives

When teachers craft lesson plans, they begin by outlining what they intend for students to learn. This process is intrinsic to successful teaching because clearly defined objectives establish the learning targets that students aim to hit by the end of a lesson.

For example, a science teacher might set an objective for students to understand photosynthesis by the end of the class. This clear objective gives students a concrete goal and a sense of purpose as they engage with the class material.

Setting clear objectives helps students:

• Focus : Students can concentrate on what is most important.
• Track Progress : They can monitor their learning journey against set goals.
• Stay Motivated : Knowing the ‘ why ’ behind their activities boosts engagement.

Additionally, these objectives serve as a north star for all classroom activities, ensuring that each task contributes directly to the intended outcomes. It removes the ambiguity about what is to be achieved and aligns both the teacher’s and the students’ efforts.

Such clarity also facilitates the effectiveness of formative assessments—periodic check-ins during the learning process to understand where students stand in relation to the lesson objectives.

Lesson Plans Provide Structure to the Class Period

A structured class period is akin to a well-choreographed performance. Each element of the lesson is thoughtfully planned and sequenced, creating a smooth flow that enhances student comprehension and engagement.

The structure delineated by a lesson plan is visible not just in the allocation of time to different activities but also in how the content logically progresses, building upon students’ previous knowledge.

What does this structure typically look like in a lesson plan?

• Introduction : The opening segment hooks students’ interests and outlines the lesson.
• Development : This longer phase dives into the new material, often with varying instructional techniques.
• Conclusion : A recap or reflective activity ties the lesson together, emphasizing key takeaways.

Through this structured approach, educators can maximize the instructional impact within the available time frame. An English teacher, for instance, might allocate time for a literature discussion, individual reading, and a writing exercise all within one class. This precision not only keeps the class moving but also ensures that pacing accommodates a complete learning cycle, from introduction to practice to assessment.

Lesson Plans Ensure a Cohesive Content Flow

Cohesion in lesson content is achieved when each part of the lesson connects seamlessly to the next, creating an educational journey where one concept builds upon another. This thoughtful sequencing promotes better understanding and retention, as students can see the relationship between ideas.

Table Illustrating the Content Flow in a Science Lesson Plan:

A lesson plan that lacks cohesion can lead to fragmented learning, with students struggling to make connections between disparate pieces of information. Conversely, a cohesive content flow helps students construct knowledge progressively, linking new learning to prior understanding and setting the stage for future lessons. This logical progression enhances cognitive processing and fosters an integrated approach to learning.

Lesson Plans Serve as a Guide for Teachers During Instruction

Teachers can refer to their lesson plans throughout the lesson to keep track of their teaching progress and ensure that they are covering all necessary material. This guidance is crucial, especially when dealing with complex topics or intricate activities that require careful pacing.

In essence, lesson plans are practical tools that help teachers to:

• Transition smoothly between topics and activities.
• Remember key questions to ask that provoke critical thinking.
• Include strategies for engaging all learners.

Furthermore, a lesson plan serves as a dynamic document that teachers can adapt in real time based on the class’s needs. For instance, if a particular concept isn’t resonating, the teacher can use alternate methods outlined in the plan to clarify. Essentially, a lesson plan assures that the instructor is prepared to handle the unpredictability of teaching.

Lesson Plans Improve Teacher Confidence in Delivering Content

Teachers who spend time developing their lesson plans thoroughly understand their subject material and instructional strategies, which translates to a more self-possessed and resolute teaching style. This self-assuredness is palpable and communicates to students a sense of authority and expertise.

Key elements of a lesson plan that bolster teacher confidence include:

• Detailed outline of the lesson content and activities.
• Pre-identified questions to provoke thought and discussion.
• Back-up plans for when activities don’t go as expected.
• Contingencies for early finishers or those needing extra support.

This robust preparation means teachers are not thrown off by unexpected questions or situations, as they have prepared contingency options. Moreover, teachers who feel confident are more likely to try innovative teaching methods, use technology effectively, and engage students in active learning.

Lesson Plans Contribute to Effective Time Management

Time management is a critical skill in education, as it allows instructors to cover all necessary content without haste. A robust lesson plan acts as a timekeeper, delineating how long should be spent on each segment of the class, ensuring that no single activity overshadows others and that there is a balance between different types of learning experiences.

For instance, a 60-minute lesson might be broken down as follows:

• Introduction: 10 minutes
• Main activity: 30 minutes
• Group practice: 10 minutes
• Conclusion and recap: 10 minutes

Without such foresight, it’s easy for a class session to become lopsided, with teachers either rushing through the last parts of their lesson or finding themselves with time to spare and no activities to fill it.

Lesson Plans Aid in the Organization of Teaching Materials

Organized teaching materials are essential for a smooth-running class. A lesson plan ensures that all the materials needed for a lesson are prepared and utilized effectively. This preparation prevents wasted time and maintains student engagement as the teacher seamlessly transitions from one activity to the next.

By having a designated place in the lesson plan for listing materials, teachers can:

• Prepare handouts, multimedia resources, and other instructional aids in advance.
• Set up needed technology or equipment before students arrive.
• Allocate and organize materials for group work or individual use during class.

Having materials organized as per the lesson plan also minimizes classroom disruptions. This operational readiness reflects a professional approach to teaching, showing students that their time is valued.

Lesson Plans Facilitate Meeting Diverse Learning Needs

In any given classroom, students come with a wide array of learning styles, abilities, and backgrounds. A lesson plan that addresses this diversity incorporates various teaching methods and materials, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to succeed.

For example, visual aids can help visual learners, while hands-on activities can benefit kinesthetic learners. Lesson plans predict these needs and equip teachers with an arsenal of strategies to differentiate their instruction.

This adaptability might manifest in the form of:

• Group work for peer-to-peer learning,
• Individual tasks tailored to student interests or levels,
• Multimedia resources to cater to different learning preferences.

Understanding and planning for diverse learning needs not only aids in student comprehension but also promotes an inclusive classroom atmosphere where each student’s potential can be realized.

Diversity in learning plans showcases a teacher’s commitment to cater to each student’s educational journey, recognizing that one size does not fit all in effective education.

Lesson Plans Assist in Assessing Student Learning

Assessment is an integral component of the teaching and learning process, and lesson plans are instrumental in integrating assessment seamlessly into classroom activities.

Effective lesson plans delineate when and how to assess understanding and skills through various forms:

• Formative Assessments : Checks for understanding during the lesson, which can be as simple as a thumbs-up or questioning.
• Summative Assessments : End-of-lesson evaluations, such as quizzes or projects, that measure what students have learned.
• Informal Assessments : Observations or spontaneous discussions that offer insight into student progress.

These planned assessments provide teachers with valuable feedback on student learning and instructional effectiveness, allowing for real-time adjustments to teaching methods and lesson pacing.

Moreover, integrating assessment strategies into lesson plans ensures that evaluations are purposeful and aligned with the lesson’s objectives, giving both teacher and student a clear understanding of the learning outcomes and expectations.

Lesson Plans Underline the Importance of Student Engagement

Lesson plans that emphasize student engagement incorporate elements designed to pique interest and foster active, hands-on involvement. The inclusion of engagement strategies such as interactive discussions, group work, and practical experiences speaks volumes about the lesson’s potential to resonate with students.

Strategies aimed at heightening engagement include:

• Asking thought-provoking questions to stimulate discussion.
• Incorporating real-world applications to demonstrate relevance.
• Utilizing gamification elements to make learning enjoyable.

By embedding these elements into lesson plans, teachers can create a dynamic learning environment where student intellectual curiosity and participation are paramount. An engaging lesson plan transforms passive classrooms into hubs of lively academic exploration, thereby increasing the retention of knowledge and fostering a love for learning.

Lesson Plans Facilitate Collaboration Among Teachers

Collaboration among educators is a powerful tool for improving instructional quality, and lesson plans are instrumental in promoting this collaborative spirit.

Here’s how a well-structured lesson plan can encourage teamwork:

• Teachers can work together to align lesson objectives with cross-curricular themes.
• Strategies can be pooled to create comprehensive lessons drawing on multiple areas of expertise.
• Lesson plans allow educators to share successful materials and ideas, reducing prep time and effort.
• Teachers can adapt and refine lessons from others to suit their individual classroom needs.
• Post-lesson discussions based on the lesson plan can lead to insights and shared improvements.
• Teachers can mentor each other by observing and giving feedback on implemented lesson plans.

When lesson plans are used as a foundation for collaboration, teachers combine their strengths, enriching the instructional process and ultimately enhancing student outcomes. This collective approach leads to greater coherence across the curriculum and provides a support network for educators to innovate and grow professionally.

Lesson Plans Streamline the Grading Process

Effective grading goes beyond merely assigning scores; it’s about providing meaningful feedback that fosters student growth.

Lesson plans can simplify this complex process by:

• Establishing clear criteria that link assessments directly to the lesson’s objectives.
• Preparing rubrics and checklists beforehand, ensuring a fair and consistent grading approach.
• Organizing the order of collected assignments for efficient review.

In a lesson plan, assessments are thought out in advance, aligning with the learning targets and making grading more systematic. This organization supplies teachers with a framework that facilitates the evaluation of student work, emphasizing feedback that contributes to learners’ educational development.

Lesson Plans Enable the Integration of Technology into Lessons

Incorporating technology into classroom learning has become an essential part of modern education. Lesson plans provide a framework for effectively embedding technological tools by:

Mapping Technology Use

• Detailing when and how to use specific digital resources.
• Planning for student-centered technology activities, like research projects or digital storytelling.

Facilitating Technology Integration

• Identifying opportunities for interactive lessons using digital platforms.
• Ensuring equitable access to technology for all students.

Enhancing Learning through Tech

• Employing tools that support visual learning, such as interactive whiteboards or educational software.
• Utilizing assessment tools that provide instant feedback through quizzes and online assessments.

Technology, when integrated thoughtfully as outlined in a lesson plan, can transform and enrich the educational experience, making learning engaging and accessible for everyone.

Lesson Plans Enhance Communication with Students and Parents

Clear and effective communication is paramount in education, and lesson plans lay the groundwork for this crucial interaction.

Here’s how lesson plans facilitate communication:

• Transparency: Lesson plans can be shared with students and parents, giving them a clear understanding of the educational objectives and expectations.
• Informed Discussions: Teachers can refer to lesson plans in parent-teacher meetings to discuss student progress and challenges.

Furthermore, posting lesson plans or sending summaries to parents can:

• Engage parents in their child’s learning journey.
• Help parents support homework and study sessions.
• Encourage parental feedback, which can inform future lesson planning.

By maintaining open lines of communication, lesson plans help establish partnerships between teachers, students, and parents, fostering a supportive community focused on student success.

Lesson Plans Offer a Framework for Reflection and Improvement

After a lesson, teachers can revisit their plans to consider what worked and what did not.

This retrospective examination is essential for continuous improvement and may include:

• Effectiveness of Instructional Strategies:  Analyzing which activities engaged students and which fell short.
• Pacing:  Reflecting on whether the allocated time for certain parts of the lesson was adequate.
• Student Outcomes:  Reviewing if the learning objectives were achieved and understanding areas where students may have struggled.

By incorporating both successes and areas for development, lesson plans evolve into living documents that grow in effectiveness with each iteration. In effect, lesson plans guide future instruction, ensuring that the quality of teaching is perpetually honed.

Lesson Plans Help Track Curriculum Coverage

Ensuring that each student receives a comprehensive education inclusive of all the necessary topics and skills is central to the responsibility of teaching. Lesson plans are the mechanism by which educators can track their coverage of the curriculum over the course of a school year.

They enable educators to:

• Conduct Detailed Curriculum Mapping: By recording which standards and benchmarks are covered in each lesson, teachers can ensure that no critical area is neglected. This also aids in making connections between different topics and identifying opportunities for integrative learning.
• Review Progress Towards Goals: Teachers can periodically check the curriculum topics covered against the annual academic calendar. This helps in determining if the class is on track to complete the necessary material before the year’s end or if adjustments need to be made to the teaching schedule.
• Identify Gaps and Address Discrepancies: In cases where certain objectives have not been adequately addressed, lesson plans offer the insight needed to remedy any omissions. Teachers can adjust upcoming lesson plans to revisit topics that need more attention, ensuring that students gain a full understanding across all areas.

Keeping such meticulous records through lesson plans ensures that education is balanced, sequential, and comprehensive, thus upholding high academic standards and consistency in learning experiences.

Lesson Plans Aid in Documenting Teaching Practices

Comprehensive documentation through lesson plans is an essential staple of educational professionalism.

Such records serve multiple vital functions:

• Continuity and Consistency : Detailed lesson plans provide a sense of continuity in teaching practices, ensuring that educational themes and objectives are consistently addressed over time. This is particularly crucial for complex concepts that require scaffolding or for courses that build upon previously acquired knowledge.
• Sharing of Best Practices : Accurate and eloquent documentation facilitates the sharing of pedagogical strategies with peers, fostering a collaborative professional environment. This exchange can inspire teachers to adopt and adapt new methods that may enhance their instructional repertoire.
• Institutional Memory : When teachers document their lesson plans, they contribute to the collective educational wisdom of their institution. For example, when a teacher moves on or retires, the documented lesson plans they leave behind can serve as valuable resources for incoming educators who assume the mantle of teaching those courses.

Documented lesson plans, therefore, are more than just a personal record for a single educator. They act as part of the vital infrastructure supporting the collective educational endeavor, ensuring that quality teaching endures beyond the tenure of individual teachers.

Final Thoughts

Remember that the time spent on lesson plans is a sacred investment. It’s through this investment that the rhythms of the classroom harmonize into an echo of shared educational purpose.

These scripted guides are vessels of intention, holding within them the potential to unlock every student’s learning capacity. They are the teacher’s silent pledge to every classroom challenge: a promise to approach each day with structure, purpose, and adaptability.

As we part ways with this discussion, let every teacher walk away with renewed reverence for the art of lesson planning — because these delicate threads weave the grand tapestry of education that spans generations and molds futures.

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Gen ed writes, writing across the disciplines at harvard college, teaching the elements of writing assignments.

Overview: How Unpacking the Elements Translates into Lesson Planning

In Unpacking the Elements we try to break down prompts into the essential features common to nearly every assignment (writing or not), and in doing so the goal was primarily two-fold: to help instructors identify the role of each element in their own assignments and how clearly each element is communicated in their prompts; and to give students and instructors a shared, simple vocabulary for talking about the goals and expectations of assignments.  In this section, the goal is to move from designing effective prompts and sharing them with students to using prompts as a road map for teaching in the classroom. If you’ve done the assignment prompt decoder and thought about elements in a specific prompt, you were maybe left with a few questions. For example:  

• What does it look like to teach each element and give students practice with them?
• What is the best order to teach the elements in?
• How can I scaffold smaller exercises or give students feedback along the way?
• What’s the timing of all of this look like within the framework of a real term?

In the pages of this section we take up these questions, first laying out more generally how teaching through the elements looks in the classroom before taking a deeper dive into a handful of the more common—and increasingly complex—types of academic writing assignments. For each kind of assignment, you’ll find sample timelines and sequences, along with out-of-the-box activities and generalizable advice on teaching with writing (“tips” and “pitfalls to avoid”). 

The advice and examples in this section are meant to be flexible enough to adapt to a wide range of real-life teaching scenarios and pedagogical approaches, but they all reflect a handful of guiding principles about the interrelated ways that assignment prompts "work": they create the context for learning experiences by serving as a touchstone for student-teacher discussions about the specific goals and expectations of the learning experience at hand, and they help keep instructors and students alive to what those goals and expectations are—and how their time together is an ongoing, well-supported engagement with them.

Three Key Principles for Teaching Writing in the Classroom

Students should always be “writing the paper”.

If your lesson plan is drawn from the actual assignment students are working on at any point in the term (whether it’s a smaller “now” response paper or a smaller part of a “bigger” project due in six weeks), then nearly every homework assignment or in-class activity is writing the paper. The purpose of section will always be more clear if students recognize that every meeting is a chance to practice relevant skills or make progress on an assignment. And of course, that recognition is only possible if students understand what the goals of the assignment they're working on are, what skills are relevant to meeting those goals, and what kinds of steps reflect progress toward them. With that in mind, it’s helpful to start with the Assignment Decoder for Students . 

Prompts don’t (and shouldn’t be asked to) speak for themselves

The assignment prompt decoders linked throughout this site are meant to give course heads, TFs & TAs, and students a way of assessing how clearly a prompt is communicating its elements. For course heads and instructors, this might lead to a revision of the prompt or clarifications in class or meetings of the teaching team. For students, it might lead to questions in section, emails to an instructor, or asking a fellow student for input. Whatever doing the decoder leads to—and whether or not the decoder is used at all—it’s crucial to keep in mind that prompts don’t speak for themselves, no matter how clear they are: they’re a framework for, and hopefully an invitation to discussion about what it will look and feel like to do an assignment well. But what about a really clear prompt—doesn’t it save class time if students can just read it on their own? It’s a fair question, and the fair response is that we can’t know whether students have understood the really clear prompt unless we have a discussion with them about it. At that point, of course, we’re back to discussing the prompt, and the upside is this: spending class time working through prompts is actually a reliably efficient way to make subsequent classes more effective. 

You can’t do it all, and you don’t need to

If you and your students are on the same page about the goals and priorities of an assignment, then you’re freed up to engage in some backward design triage: How much time is there until the likely deadline? How many sections are there to work with? What are the essential elements that need teaching and practice? What’s a good place to start? When giving feedback, it’s almost as unhelpful to just write “A-” without comments as it is to fill the margins with comments or append a novella’s worth of reflection to the end of a student’s essay. In both cases, it’s unclear what the rubric for feedback is and how they reflect the priorities of this assignment. And the same goes for teaching this assignment: You should find the sequence of in-class activities and formative assessments that best balance what’s necessary for students to succeed with what’s possible given the time and bandwidth available to you and your students. The general advice and sample trajectories for assignments in this section are meant to make that balance feel both attainable and much more than “good enough”—it’s what great teachers aim for. 

• DIY Guides for Analytical Writing Assignments

• Types of Assignments
• Unpacking the Elements of Writing Prompts
• The Steps of Teaching the Most Common Types of Writing Assignments
• Giving Feedback to Students

Assignment Decoder

Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning: a critical process of Lesson Study

• Original Article
• Open access
• Published: 14 March 2016
• Volume 48 , pages 411–423, ( 2016 )

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• Toshiakira Fujii 1  

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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 under-appreciated 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.

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1 Introduction

While the history of Lesson Study in Japan spans more than a century (Makinae, 2010 ), for Japanese educators, Lesson Study is like air, part of everyday school life. This situation possibly explains why Lesson Study is regarded as being under-theorised (e.g. Elliott, 2012 ). Educators outside Japan however, having had to learn about Lesson Study less naturally, may sometimes lose some important aspects of Lesson Study.

Lesson Study came to the attention of educators outside of Japan primarily through the publication of The Teaching Gap (Stigler and Hiebert, 1999 ), which described findings from the TIMSS video study focussing on the eighth grade mathematics lessons in USA, Germany, and Japan. Chapter seven in particular, titled “Japan’s approach to the improvement of classroom teaching”, which is based on Yoshida’s ( 1999 ) doctoral dissertation, now available in book form (Fernandez and Yoshida, 2004 ), provoked enormous interest, not only in Lesson Study, but also in the typical structure of Japanese mathematics lessons. Independently, some educators such as Lewis also noticed the significance of Japanese Lesson Study (Lewis and Tsuchida, 1998 ).

Since then many mathematics teachers and teacher educators around the world have been involved in Lesson Study, and many books and research papers have been written on various aspects of Lesson Study (Lewis, 2002 ; Lewis et al., Lewis and R, Perry., & J. Hurd, 2009 ; Hart, Alston and Murata, 2011 ; Doig and Groves, 2011 ; Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008 ; White and Lim, 2008 ; Ono and Ferreira, 2010 ). However, some aspects of Lesson Study, that may be taken for granted by Japanese teachers, seem not to be well understood outside Japan.

This paper aims to clarify the role and function of lesson planning in the Lesson Study process, based on case studies conducted in three schools in Tokyo.

2 Background

2.1 the lesson study process.

Lesson Study is an approach to teacher professional development that differs sharply from the professional development practices common in other countries. Liptak (cited in Lewis, 2002 , p. 12) contrasted Lesson Study with traditional professional development as practised in the United States, as shown in Table  1 .

Lesson Study begins with a question , not with an answer prepared by someone else. Identifying this question, which becomes the research theme for Lesson Study, is the first step in the process (see Fig.  1 ).

The process of Lesson Study (Fujii, 2014a , p. 113)

The research theme is developed through consideration of the reality of students’ current state vis - à - vis educational or long-term goals for their learning and development.

The second step of Lesson Study is to develop a plan to address the research theme through lessons. This means making an instructional plan for a selected unit and a detailed plan for one of the lessons in that unit in which the planning team puts forth their ideas about how to address the research theme while teaching specific academic content. That lesson is called the research lesson.

The third and fourth steps in Fig.  1 , conducting the research lesson and having a detailed discussion about the lesson, occur in one day—a big event day for the school. Typically, it is done in a half day; one class of students stays for the research lesson while the other classes are dismissed so that every teacher can come to observe the research lesson (even the school nurse and school nutritionist usually attend). At the end of the post-lesson discussion, usually there will be final comments lasting 30 min or more by a “knowledgeable other” from outside the school, who has been invited for this purpose.

The fifth step is to reflect on the process and consolidate and carry forward the learnings from it. Teachers will usually write their reflections and publish records of Lesson Study activities in the school bulletin.

Because they are the most visible aspects of Lesson Study, some people think of the research lesson and post-lesson discussion as the most important parts of Lesson Study, or even use “Lesson Study” to refer to the research lesson alone. However, these are just two of the five components of Lesson Study.

The Lesson Study cycle, with its five steps as illustrated in Fig.  1 , contrasts with similar diagrams in other publications that have four steps (e.g. Lewis, 2002 ; Lewis and Hurd, 2011 ). These five steps, while overlapping with the four steps in the other diagrams, more accurately portray the reality of Japanese teachers’ Lesson Study activity by having a closer correspondence between the titles of the steps and the activities undertaken by teachers.

Borrowing from Lewis’ ( 2002 ) and Lewis and Hurd’s ( 2011 ) descriptions, each step can be summarized as follows:

Goal setting Consider long-term goals for student learning and development. Identify gaps between these long-term goals and current reality. Formulate the research theme.

Lesson planning Collaboratively plan a “research lesson” designed to address the goals. Prepare a “lesson proposal”—a document that describes the research theme, content goals, connections between the current content and related content from former and later grades, rationale for the chosen approach, a detailed plan for the research lesson, anticipated student thinking, data collection, and more.

Research lesson One team member teaches the research lesson while the other members of the planning team, staff members from across the school, and, usually, an outside knowledgeable other observe and collect data.

Post - lesson discussion In a formal lesson colloquium, observers share data from the lesson to illuminate student learning, disciplinary content, lesson and unit design, and broader issues in teaching and learning.

Reflection Document the cycle to consolidate and carry forward learnings, as well as new questions for the next cycle of Lesson Study. Write a report or bulletin that includes the original research lesson proposal, student data from the research lesson, and reflections on what was learned.

There are three types of Lesson Study in Japan: School-based, District-based, and National-level Lesson Study. According to Takahashi ( 2006 ), participants’ motivations or interests are different in these types of Lesson Study, but the cycle itself is basically the same. The difference is in the range, or scope, of students to be considered: school-based Lesson Study is concerned with students in the school; District-based Lesson Study is concerned with students in the district; and National-level Lesson Study is concerned with the reality of students across the country, and has a research theme with a nationwide view. Lesson Study is sometimes introduced as an open lesson by a veteran teacher “jumping in” to another teacher’s classroom (Takahashi, 2013 , p. 84). A “jumping in” lesson is just a demonstration unless the veteran teacher has a clear goal for the lesson as in Step 1, and proposes a new idea or content to be teachable, or he or she wants to demonstrate students’ potential to be greater than ordenary teachers believe, so that he, or she, plans the lesson carefully as in Step 2. This kind of Lesson Study exists in Japan and in this case the collaboration among teachers is not a critical part of Lesson Study. In any case, each step in the Lesson Study cycle is closely related to the others, with the third and fourth steps particularly related to the first and second.

In school-based Lesson Study, which is the focus of this paper, the typical Lesson Study cycle begins at the end of an academic year—i.e. in February or March in Japan—when the faculty decides upon a research theme for the next school year, which starts in April. Several research lessons are scheduled from, say, May to November. Each research lesson and its post-lesson discussion occupy only one day, but the teachers reflect on what they learned at the research lessons and usually write a booklet or long summary report by the end of school year.

While the importance of a lesson plan as a product of Lesson Study is certainly understood, compared to the research lesson, of which there are many public examples, the collaborative work of Japanese teachers in creating a lesson plan is generally mysterious, because it is difficult to observe. According to Lee and Takahashi ( 2011 ) “Lesson plans are central resources for these teachers in that they constantly refer to, problematize and act on them during the entire cycle of the [Lesson Study] procedure” (p. 210).

Japanese teachers spend a lot of energy and time crafting a lesson plan. Although the details vary from school to school and even from teacher to teacher, Lewis ( 2002 , pp.127-130) notes that a typical template for a lesson plan for a research lesson in Japan consists of the following:

Name of the unit

Unit objectives

Research theme

Current characteristics of students

Learning plan for the unit, which includes connections to standards and to prior and subsequent learning, the sequence of lessons in the unit and the tasks for each lesson, and explanation of unit “flow”

Plan for the research lesson

Background information and data collection forms for observers (e.g. a seating chart)

The Japanese term for the document created for a research lesson is gakushushido - an (学習指導案), which is usually translated as “lesson plan”. In this paper we will use that common translation, although we prefer the phrase “lesson proposal”, because the document is much larger and broader in scope than what is usually meant by “lesson plan”. Also the word “plan” may imply a fixed script, but in Japanese Lesson Study the teacher is expected to use his or her judgment if students respond in unanticipated ways. As Lee andTakahashi (2011) argue, researchers have taken for granted that using lesson plans, no matter how well devised, always involves judgment and interpretation, as teachers and their students face the contingencies of the lesson in the classoom. Their empirical study, in the context of Lesson Study, provided analytic descriptions of the interactive processes through which lesson plans are realized, leading to the conclusion that “classroom teachers use lesson plans as communicative resources to identify problems, specify assumptions about their teaching, and act on the evolving contingency of classroom interaction” (p. 209). However, Lee and Takahashi ( 2011 ) did not describe details of planning the lesson, including how teachers adapted or designed the task for the lesson, or how many hours they spent on planning.

In the context of Lesson Study, Lewis, Perry and Hurd (2009) focussed on one US lesson study group, of six teachers from five different schools, that conducted a research lesson in a 2-week summer workshop. This is an experimental situation, which is different from the Japanese traditional school-based Lesson Study setting. However it is worth considering in terms of the lesson planning activity. They documented that the group spent a total of six hours planning the lesson: “select research lesson, do task and share solutions, anticipate student thinking, write instructional plan using template” (Lewis et al., 2009 , p. 290). However they have not offered descriptions of how they designed or adapted the task for the lesson.

On the other hand, Fernandez and Yoshida ( 2004 ) described in detail the process of planning lessons in the context of Lesson Study. This ethnographic study, focussed on a local elementary school in Hiroshima, vividly shows Japanese teachers’ activities. However, the Lesson Study described there has the rather unique feature in that, following the research lesson being taught by a young inexperienced teacher, observed by the whole school and discussed by only the lower grade group of teachers and the principal, the lesson was revised by these teachers and then re-taught by a veteran teacher, with the whole school and an ouside advisor observing the lesson and taking part in the post-lesson discussion. The notion of Re - Teaching is extremely problematic and sensitive. In fact, the need to revise and re-teach a lesson is one of the misconceptions identified in foreign countries implementing Japanese Lesson Study (Fujii, 2014b ). Whether Re - Teaching exists or not in the Lesson Study process affects the nature of the planning and the discussion of the lesson.

2.2 Structured problem solving

The structure of Japanese mathematics lessons is often regarded as unique by non-Japanese eyes, with researchers from outside Japan having noted patterns in Japanese mathematics lessons. For example, Becker et al. ( 1990 ) identified eight components in a typical Japanese mathematics lesson, while Stigler and Hiebert ( 1999 ) identified five components and labelled these lessons as structured problem solving . But their points of view are those of observers, while Japanese teachers usually do not think about the structure of their lessons in the same way. For instance, the first component of Stigler and Hiebert ( 1999 ), reviewing the previous lesson, is not an important activity from a Japanese teacher’s point of view. Instead Japanese teachers typically consider a mathematics lesson as problem solving in terms of the four phases shown in Table  2 (see, for example, Shimizu, 1999 ).

This type of lesson imposes certain demands on how to interpret the lesson plan. Phase 1, presenting the problem , means helping students understand the context of the problem or task and what it will mean to solve the task—but it specifically excludes any exposition by the teacher about how to solve the task. Instead, students are expected to work independently on the task for 10–20 min (phase 2). Therefore teachers need to discuss the appropriateness of the task described in the lesson plan. The third phase, called neriage in Japanese, assumes that students will arrive at different solution methods and focusses on a comparison and discussion of those different solution methods. Therefore teachers need to discuss the plausibilty of the anticipated student solutions listed in the lesson plan. In the fourth phase, matome , the teacher may say something about which strategy may be the most sophisticated and why, but it should go beyond that to include comments by the teacher concerning the mathematical and educational values of the task and lesson (Fujii et al., 1998 ). Therefore teachers need to discuss the resonableness of the matome by the teacher as foreshadowed in the lesson plan. For a lesson to work in this way, the task should be understandable by the students with minimal teacher intervention; it should be solvable by at least some students (but not too quickly), and it should lend itself to multiple strategies.

This paper focusses on the second, planning step in the Lesson Study cycle, and aims to illuminate the nature of the collaborative work among teachers, based on three case studies where re-teaching was not part of the Lesson Study process, with particular emphasis on planning for these four phases of the research lessons.

3 Methodology

This research took place in three local public elementary schools in Tokyo, which will be referred to as schools M, S and T. These schools were participating in the International Math - teacher Professionalization Using Lesson Study project (IMPULS), a recently established project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, located at Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, as an international centre of Lesson Study in mathematics, Tokyo Gakugei University and its network of laboratory schools help teacher professionals learn about authentic Japanese Lesson Study, and thereby prepare them to create Lesson Study systems in their own countries for long-term, independent, educational improvement in mathematics teaching. Second, the project conducts research projects examining the mechanism of Japanese Lesson Study in order to maximize its impact on schools in Japan.

Although several research lessons were scheduled for each year, this study focusses on just one research lesson at each of these schools, and the planning meetings for those research lessons—that is, just one lesson study cycle in each school.

The author observed each lesson-planning meeting and took fieldnotes. In addition, each lesson-planning meeting was video-recorded and later transcribed; and all lesson plans and revised versions were collected and analyzed with respect to their evolution.

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the planning process undertaken by these groups of teachers in preparation for the research lessons. In a similar vein to the research carried out by Lee and Takahashi ( 2011 ), discourse-in-interaction analysis (Sacks et al., 1974 ) was used to examine “the methods and procedures by which participants carry out ordinary tasks of classroom teaching and collaboration among teachers” (Lee and Takahashi, 2011 , p. 215). The analysis began with unmotivated looking (Sacks, 1992 ) during the observations of the planning meetings in order to identify key discussions that eventually led to consensus regarding the lesson plans.

Through this overview of the lesson planning processes, the author came to realize that the discussions were based on the flow of the lesson. In particular, it seemed that teachers could imagine or visualize clearly what would happen at the research lesson through reading the lesson plan. Therefore it was clear that this study could focus on analyzing the planning of the flow of the research lesson.

Based on the flow of Japanese problem-solving lessons, thematic content analysis (see, for example, Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006 ; Braun and Clarke, 2006 ) was carried out on transcripts of the lesson planning discussions. Using the framework of the four phases of problem-solving lessons (Table  2 ), participants’ comments were coded with appropriate keywords to track their views of the lessons. These comments were examined with respect to the role of the lesson plan and planning meetings, in order to make visible an important part of Lesson Study—namely the planning process.

The following section is organized according to the main results obtained through the inductive process of examining the trajectory of revising lesson plans, transcribed records of planning meetings, research lesson, and post-lesson discussion, and field notes.

The results of this study are presented in three sections. First, we report on the lesson planning meetings overall—e.g. the number of meetings and participants, and the duration of meetings. Second, we examine the major component of the meetings. Finally, we identify major concerns at the meetings, such as the appropreateness of the task for the lesson, anticipated student solutions, and how to organize the comparison and discussion phase in the lesson.

4.1 The lesson planning process overall

The dates of the research lessons held at school M, S and T, together with the dates of the planning meetings are shown in Table  3 . The planning meetings began between 4 and 6 weeks before the research lessons. Two schools, M and S, had four planning meetings and school T had just two meetings.

It should be noted that there was no rehearsal or trial implementation of a tentative lesson plan between planning meetings. It should be noted also that this schedule fails to reveal the amount of time that the teachers may have spent thinking about their research lesson beforehand, since the grade, unit, and lesson may have been selected at the end of the previous academic year in March.

Table  4 shows the number of participants at each of the planning meetings.

In the case of school M, the regular members of planning meetings were: the leader of the research steering committee, who also chaired the meeting and was the lead teacher for mathematics in the school; three Grade 3 teachers, one of whom taught the research lesson; and four Grade 4 teachers—a total of eight participants. The first planning meeting, held in the principal’s office, was rather informal, since the knowledgeable other, who had given a talk at a research lesson that day, joined the meeting, together with the principal of the school. Beside these two participants, three Grade 3 teachers and two Grade 4 teachers attended. But at later meetings, in the school conference room, the only participants were the eight regular members.

At school S, which is a small school with only one class at each grade, the first meeting included five regular members: two classroom teachers for Grades 5 and 6, the music teacher, the art teacher, and the teacher for mathematics. The Grade 6 teacher was the leader of the school research steering committee and taught the research lesson. In Tokyo, in the case of mathematics only, if a school wants to divide classes into two or three groups for teaching mathematics, in order to help cater for individual differences, the school gets an extra teacher—in this case this teacher. The music teacher and the art teacher were teaching Grade 5 and 6 students, therefor the regular members were the upper year level team. At the second meeting, the principal joined them; at the third meeting, the knowledgeable other also joined; but the fourth meeting included only the Grade 1 teacher and the Grade 6 teacher, the music teacher, and a special needs teacher—these four constituted the school research steering committee. The venue was always a meeting room in the school.

At school T, regular members were the leader of the research steering committee, three Grade 3 teachers and three Grade 4 teachers, and the principal of the school, who attended the planning meetings—so the total number was 8. One of the Grade 4 teachers taught the research lesson. There were only two meetings, both of which were held in the principal’s office.

School M, S, and T each organized a research steering committee. According to Takahashi and McDougal ( 2014 ), a research steering committee in Japan consists of representatives of each grade level and, in the case of the Lesson Study focussing on mathematics, the lead teacher for mathematics. In addition, representatives of special subject teams, such as music, science and home economics may join. The research steering committee leads the school’s efforts and maintains the cohesion of ideas across the grades. Takahashi and McDougal ( 2014 , p. 16) list roles and functions of research steering committees as follows (parenthesis added by author):

Developing a master plan for the school research;

Scheduling and leading monthly meetings to find strategies to address the school’s research theme based on the ideas of the teachers;

Publishing a monthly (not always the case) internal newsletter to record the findings from each research lesson;

Planning, editing, and publishing the school research reports, including those for the research open house; and

Arranging for knowledgeable others to present lectures, teach demonstration lessons (not always the case), and give final comments at research lessons.

As shown in Table  5 , the duration of the planning meetings ranged from a minimum of 30 min to a maximum of 128 min.

The chairperson of the school research steering committee led most of the meetings at schools M, S, and T. As these schools were conducting Lesson Study focussing on mathematics, the lead teacher for mathematics tended to also be in charge of the school research steering committee. Besides regular members from the school, the knowledgeable other, who had given comments on a research lesson that day, attended the first meeting at school M and the third meeting at school S. Involving a knowledgeable other in this way is common; after a research lesson and discussion ends, the team responsible for the next research lesson will meet with the knowledgeable other for further discussion and to get advice for their lesson.

As both of the 30-min meetings were with the knowledgeable other, these could be regarded as atypical. The average duration was 72 min, with the average duration excluding the 30-min meetings being 83 min.

One reason that may account for the differences in the duration of planning meetings between schools could be that the principals of schools S and T attended and participated actively in these meetings, with teachers in both schools appearing to have great confidence in them. When teachers asked, these principals gave suggestions to help break deadlocks. As a result, the duration could become shorter. In the case of school M, some of the regular members of planning meetings were young and inexperienced. Therefore, the leader of the research steering committee, who was also the lead teacher for mathematics, sometimes needed to explain the position of the lesson in the scope and sequence of the Japanese course of study, and the mathematical value of the task for use in the lesson. These factors may have had an effect on the longer duration of the meetings.

4.2 Major components and structure of the planning meetings

The first meetings held at school M and S were unusual in that the teachers discussed ideas about the research lesson in depth without a written lesson plan. At all other meetings, the discussion was based on a draft lesson plan, which had been written, either with or without the support of colleagues, by the teacher who would be teaching the lesson. Furthermore, the flow of the planning meetings followed the flow of the lesson plan. Other issues, such as the logistics of the research lesson or post-lesson discussion, were not discussed.

The format of the first draft of the lesson plan for schools M, S, and T was basically the same as Lewis’ ( 2002 ) template as described earlier in this paper. In the case of school M, component 5 in Lewis’ ( 2002 ) template, Learning plan for the unit , was missing at the beginning, but was added later.

Among the seven components in Lewis’ ( 2002 ) template, component 6, Plan for the research lesson —which we will refer to here as Planning the flow of the research lesson in order to distinguish it from the overall lesson plan—is the most prominent in terms of both quantity and quality. At school T, the draft lesson plan had already been prepared for the first meeting, written by the teacher who was to teach the research lesson. The items discussed at the first meeting were as follows:

The research theme of the school (8 min).

The goal of the unit; evaluation points for learning (i. Interest, Eagerness, and Attitude; ii. Mathematical Way of Thinking; iii. Mathematical Skills; and iv. Knowledge and Understanding); the relationship between this unit and the research theme; other units related to this unit; students’ reality; and teachers’ vision of ideal students (6 min).

What ideal students would look like (11 min).

Unit and lesson plans (2 min).

Planning the flow of the research lesson (51 min)

These items were exactly the items written in the draft lesson plan.

In both meetings at school T, discussion relating to planning the flow of the research lesson occupied the majority of the time: 51 min (65 %) of the first meeting as shown above, and 87 min (78 %) of the second meeting.

At school S, the first meeting was held without a written lesson plan. At this stage, teachers had not yet decided exactly which unit or content to teach for the research lesson and how. From the second meeting onwards, the teachers’ discussions were based on the lesson plan drafted by the teacher who was to teach the research lesson. The knowledgeable other attended the third meeting. Excluding the first and third meetings, the proportion of time spent on planning the flow of the research lesson was 74 %, while when all four meetings are included, 52 % of the time was spent on planning the flow of the research lesson.

At school M, the first meeting was also held without the written lesson plan. From the second meeting onwards, the discussion was based on the draft lesson plan which had been written mainly by the teacher who was to teach the research lesson, but as a team, with support from the third grade teachers. In the second, third and fourth meetings, the proportion of time spent planning the flow of the research lesson was 74 %, while if the first meeting is included the proportion was 66 %. Across the three schools, omitting meetings without the lesson plan, the average proportion of time spent on planning the flow of the research lesson was 72 %; while if all meetings are included the proportion was 63 %.

Thus we have two findings: one, that the planning meetings followed the structure of the lesson plan; and two, that the discussion among teachers was particularly focussed on planning the flow of the research lesson.

The discussions specific to the flow of the research lesson during the planning meetings at the three schools could be aligned with the four phases of a problem-solving lesson (see Table  2 ). For example, at the second meeting at school S, a discussion on how students might grasp the given task (15 min) was related to phase 1, Presenting the problem for the day ; discussion about likely student responses (14 min) was related to phase 2, Problem solving by the students ; discussion about how to organize the comparison and discussion period (15 min) was obviously related to phase 3, Comparing and discussing ; and discussion about how to conclude the lesson (5 min) was related to phase 4, Summing up by the teacher . Of the 49 min focussed on the flow of the research lesson, the proportions of time related to these four phases was approximately 31, 29, 31 and 10 %. The other two schools showed a similar pattern.

In the next section we will present, in more detail, what the teachers talked about regarding each phase of their lessons.

4.3 Major concerns when planning the flow of the research lesson

Discussions by the teachers, while planning the flow of the research lesson, were classified into three key categories: Appropriateness of the task, Plausibility of the anticipated student solutions, and Quality of the comparison and discussion ( neriage ) phase.

4.3.1 Appropriateness of the task

Discussions about the task for the research lesson can be classified into two types. One is discussion about the task and unit from an advanced mathematical perspective, where teachers clarify the scope and sequence of relevant topics, or relationships within and expansion of the content. The second is to discuss the appropriateness of the task to the goal of the lesson, including detailed consideration of the numbers in the task, the context of the task, and so on.

When teachers talked about the position of the unit within the curriculum, they carefully referred to the National Course of Study ( 2008 ) published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. According to Lewis’ ( 2002 ) typical lesson plan template, this discussion is related to “connections to standards and prior and subsequent learning”, which is included in the fifth componentof the template, Learning plan for the unit , where related units in former and later grades are explained and shown by using a diagram. In fact, teachers at school M used their own diagram as they discussed why the unit was important and as they traced the students’ learning path leading to the unit. In the case of school S, at the second meeting where teachers talked about sequence of units, they recalled an old version of the National Course of Study (1998) in which “speed” was placed in fifth grade. “Speed” was now in sixth grade in the National Course of Study ( 2008 ). In fact, one teacher said “At fourth grade we teach multiplication and division of decimal numbers, and in fifth grade we teach the size of per-unit quantities. Footnote 1 The closest content to speed is size of per-unit quantities.… We used to teach speed in fifth grade, together with the size of per-unit quantities”.

Teachers also talked a lot about the task itself. The tasks in all three cases were not directly from textbooks; they were newly created, or modified from tasks in the textbook. Teachers discussed why they selected the particular tasks; what roles the tasks were expected to play in the unit; what benefits students might gain from solving the tasks: whether it helped to develop a new concept, a new way of thinking, or some important procedure.

The discussion of the curriculum was closely related to the solution of the task, because related content in the curriculum was expected to be a resource for students to solve the task. For example, in the second meeting in School S, there was the following exchange:

Students learned how to arrange to get the same numbers for time or distance, didn’t they?

Yes, I suppose. However, the idea of a common multiple was learned a long time ago from the students’ point of view.

Probably they forgot the procedure to find the common multiple.

When they learned division of decimal numbers, they learned the idea of per-unit. It’s the same thing here. However, the idea of per-unit was not learned in the context of comparing things.

The idea of per-unit quantity was applicable for comparing crowdedness. That is a mathematical way of thinking that could be applicable for Speed.

This kind of detailed and concrete consideration of previously-learned content was observed in all three schools.

Teachers also engaged in detailed discussions about the task itself, including which numbers to use and why. This aspect of Lesson Study was noted by Stigler and Hiebert ( 1999 ), who reported that teachers would talk about the “problem with which the lesson would begin, including such details as the exact wording and numbers to be used” (p. 117). However, the selection of numbers is not always from a purely mathematical point of view.

For example, in the case of School S, teachers thought about numbers both in terms of their students’ reality and also from a procedural or calculation point of view. The teacher who would teach the research lesson said:

Child A in the problem can run 40 metres in only 6 s. In my class there is no such fast runner. However I decided to use these numbers, because these numbers are easier for children to calculate.

Time and distance data for the first three people in the problem (A, B, C) were not changed, but data for two people (E, F) were changed from E (42 metres in 6.7 s), F (28 metres in 4.9 s) to E (45 metres in 6.5 s), F (50 metres in 8 s), in order to provide some faster speeds. Numbers for D, E, and F were considered hard for students to calculate and the teachers also worried about having decimal fractions as the result of calculations. However, they decided to keep the numbers and let students use calculators if they wanted.

In the case of school M, the task was to contrast partitive and quotitive division problems obtained from one mathematical sentence. The teachers chose to use 8 ÷ 2 after also discussing 12 ÷ 3, 18 ÷ 6, 6 ÷ 2, and 10 ÷ 2 as possible candidates. They considered the numbers 8, 2, and 4 as the most easily distinguishable for students, so that students would not confuse them in using, or explaining, their ideas.

In the case of school T, the research lesson was on learning about quadrilaterals and the task was to classify quadrilaterals. The teachers changed the plan from asking students to draw figures freely on dot paper to giving students figures already drawn by the teacher. The teacher worried that students might not construct certain figures that the teacher particularly wanted to discuss in the lesson. The teachers also discussed what would be a suitable number and what types of quadrilaterals to give. If the number of figures was too small, students would not be interested in classifying them, or they would not feel any necessity to make groups. Eventually the teachers decided on nine figures: a square, a rectangle, two parallelograms, two rhombi, an isosceles trapezium, a general trapezium, and a general quadrilateral. The team decided not to include a trapezium with a right angle. As part of their discussion, teachers simulated individual students solving the problem to get an idea of the time required. Further, they considered the quality of the problem-solving activity in terms of the appropriateness of the task and the goal of the lesson.

At all three schools, the teachers discussed the unit in reference to the curriculum, as well as discussing the main task in terms of its appropriateness within the unit, its value for clarifying mathematical ideas, and its appropriateness for accomplishing the goal of the lesson. In terms of the appropriateness of the task for the goals of the lesson, teachers considered what solutions or ideas the students would be likely to bring up. This is the topic of the next section.

4.3.2 Anticipated student solutions

In all three schools, teachers spent time discussing likely student responses to the main task in the research lesson. These discussions usually began by considering what was most likely from the class as a whole. They then went on to consider likely responses from students who were rather slow learners and from students who were fast learners.

In the case of school S, teachers pretended to be students in order to solve the speed task, Who is faster? (see Table  6 ), from the students’ point of view. Through this activity, teachers confirmed the plausibility of the four anticipated solutions already written in the lesson plan: (1) finding a common multiple of distance to compare; (2) finding a common multiple of time to compare; (3) finding the amount of time per metre to compare; and (4) finding the distance per second to compare.

In the case of school T, one teacher was asked to pretend to be a student to solve the task, and the other teachers watched his activity. In the case of school M, teachers wondered whether students would be able to create two kinds of division stories or just one story. The team leader asked the other teachers if they felt uneasy partly because of their own experiences. Teachers made explicit reference to their own experiences as they tried to anticipate students’ responses to the task.

In all three schools, teachers considered how to deal with slow learners. In the case of school S, the teacher had already decided to provide hints to students who wanted them during the individual problem-solving period. The team discussed specifically what should be on these hint cards. While a hint card suggesting using common multiples was reasonable from the teachers’ initial point of view, they no longer thought this might be the case when they imagined, or visualized, the lesson. They thought this strategy would eventually be rejected in favour of a better strategy: finding the distance per second. One teacher said, “Students might ask the teacher, ‘ Why did you not give me the best hint, if you knew ?’” The other teachers agreed that was likely to happen. So they discussed how to let students notice the per second strategy. Finally teachers thought of using 30 metres and 5 s as the data. “It divides beautifully”. “If the teacher asks a question such as, ‘ Five seconds to go (30   m), so if it were one second how far could you go? , students may be able to notice the idea of per second ’”. “It will work,” one teacher said, “it looks fine”. Eventually the teacher decided to suggest using the “per second method” to solve the task using the data of 30 metres and 5 s.

In all three schools, teachers also considered how to deal with fast learners in the lesson. For instance, at school M, a teacher said, “Students who have finished solving the task, I would ask them to write mathematical sentences, possibly like 4 × 2 = 8 or 2 × 4 = 8, showing the process to get the answer”.

4.3.3 The comparison and discussion ( neriage ) phase

The comparision and discussion ( neriage ) phase follows the problem solving by the students. This phase in the structured problem-solving lesson is the most difficult for teachers to deal with. Each correct solution has equal value in terms of getting an answer. However, the ideas involved may not have equal value. The neriage phase is when the teacher elicits these ideas and discusses the value of each solution. The teacher at school S clearly stated, “Although each strategy is sure to get the correct answer, we should not end there … I want the students to know that getting the answer is not the final goal”.

In the case of school M, teachers wanted students to compare two word problems, for partitive and quotitive division, through the use of multiplication sentences to model situations. (See the “ Appendix ” for the actual task.) The lead teacher of the research steering committee posed the question, “What should we ask to elicit a multiplication maths sentence?” For the next 17 min the teachers discussed what the question should be, including its exact wording.

At school T, teachers talked about which point or theme for discussion would be best: the number of groups of quadrilaterals, where the teacher might say “this student made two groups and the other student made three groups, what made these difference? What were the thoughts behind these categorizations?” or how to characterize each group, for example “This student made two groups. Can you see the common characteristics of the quadrilaterals in each group?” One teacher asked, “Which is the higher level of thinking?” to which another teacher responded, “Probably the number of groups is higher. This point is proposed in the lesson plan”. So they decided to ask students to discuss how many groups there were and reasons behind this in the neriage phase.

The teams at all three schools discussed how to elevate students’ mathematical thinking by comparing individual students’ solutions.

5 Discussion

It is well known that Japanese teachers get together before a research lesson to discuss the lesson. What do teachers discuss? This study reveals that their discussions followed the lesson plan, which had been drafted or created before meetings, and they devoted approximately two thirds of the time to discussing the flow of the research lesson. Within that time, teachers focussed on the appropriateness of the task, anticipated student solutions, and the plan for comparing and discussing those student solutions. The teachers also referred to the Japanese National Course of Study and its guide for teachers.

5.1 The role of the Japanese National Course of Study in designing and adapting the task for the research lesson

At planning meetings, teachers frequently referred to the National Course of Study when they needed to confirm the role of the unit, or focus lesson, within the entire curriculum. Teachers at school S talked about the placement of speed in the previous National Course of Study. This is a more difficult conversation to have in countries lacking a clear curriculum. Lewis and Tsuchida ( 1998 ) argued that having a frugal, shared curriculum was necessary for implementing Lesson Study. With a clear curriculum sequence, teachers could identify the value of the research lesson and the unit within the curriculum: by identifying closely related content in former and later grades, teachers can understand why the research lesson is important for later learning. And, identifying similar units or content in earlier grades helps teachers infer what students might do to solve the task, based on their previous learning. All three teams of teachers identified the position of the research lesson in the curriculum in order to clarify students’ learning trajectory.

5.2 The value of discussing anticipated solutions

Data from the three schools revealed that teachers tried hard to anticipate student solutions in detail; and what they anticipated influenced the design of the lesson. For example, it influenced the design of the task, such as in the case of school T where the decision whether to include a trapezium with a right angle was made through considering students’ anticipated solutions. Anticipating student responses also influenced how teachers decided to pose the problem. For instance, teachers at school S considered how students would react to the question of which person is faster when only times were given. Also teachers tried to predict students’ difficulties, and discussed how to reduce students’ confusion in comparing three speeds. They eventually decided to erase the slowest person’s data in order to focus on only two people.

Based on their experience, Japanese teachers know that the conditions, or characteristics, of the task influence students’ thinking processes and solution methods. In the case of school T, the teachers thought that the right angle might cause students to go in a direction that was not consistent with the goal of the lesson. Anticipating student solutions at planning meetings is therefore important in Lesson Study, and this unique activity is a characteristic of task design in Lesson Study (Fujii, 2015 ).

Teachers also think carefully about the numbers used in a task because this can strongly influence students’ ways of solving the task. In the case of school S, teachers deliberately chose awkward numbers for the additional speed data, of persons D, E, F. The teacher explained, “I want students to say that it is awkward to calculate common multiples among them”. She deliberately chose numbers that would push students to calculate distance divided by time. On the other hand, the numbers for B and C were (30, 6) and (30, 5) respectively, with these chosen because the numbers “divide beautifully”. The teacher clearly anticipated that some students would calculate 30 ÷ 6 and 30 ÷ 5 to get the distance per second.

Close attention to the specific numbers does not mean that teachers are sticking to a concrete level of thinking or encouraging students to think concretely. On the contrary, teachers consider the general aspect of the numbers—their quasi-variable aspects. A quasi-variable is a number deliberately used in a general way, so that it serves as a representative of many numbers, just as a variable would (Fujii and Stephens, 2001 , 2008 ; Fujii, 2008 , 2010 ). Numbers are often chosen based on their quasi-variable power, or how well they can demonstrate a general truth—a general truth that is brought out during whole class discussion.

A structured problem-solving lesson includes a neriage —comparison and discussion—phase for students to compare or experience their friends’ methods and discuss similarities and differences between strategies as a whole class. When designing the task, there needs to be consideration of whether the task will elicit the alternative approaches needed for an effective neriage . Therefore teachers carefully discuss and choose appropriate numbers for the task.

Discussing students’ anticipated solutions while considering the specific numbers in the task clarifies the mathematical value of the task. In their book The Teaching Gap Stigler and Hiebert ( 1999 , p. 118) have another example: teachers discuss appropriate number sentences to use in the context of teaching subtraction across 10. Subtraction across 10 can be solved by subtraction-addition (e.g. 12–9 = 10–9 + 2), subtraction–subtraction (e.g. 12–9 = 12–2–7), counting down, and counting up. In this example, the teachers believed that the subtraction-addition strategy was the most valuable for students to learn, so they examined the potential of different choices of numbers to lead to that strategy. For the same reason, almost all textbooks in Japan choose 13–9 or 12–9 to elicit the subtraction-addition strategy (Doig, Groves, and Fujii, 2011 ). In the case of school S, numbers were chosen to lead students to calculate distance divided by time. In the case of school T, teachers chose geometrical figures which could lead students to classify them in terms of characteristics related to their parallel or perpendicular sides. Anticipating student solutions in Lesson Study helps clarify the mathematical value of the task, and helps teachers make sure that the goal of the lesson is reached.

5.3 The value of designing the neriage phase of the lesson

The comparison and discussion of multiple student solutions needs to be more than “show and tell” (Takahashi, 2008 ). This neriage phase of a lesson should be an actualization of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Ohtani, 2014 ), and the role of the teacher is critical. Teachers at the three schools, M, S, and T, discussed at length how to deepen students’ ideas in the neriage phase. A teacher at school S said, “Although each strategy is sure to get the correct answer, we should not end there”. This comment shows teachers’ deliberate efforts to elevate all students’ ways of thinking.

During the planning meetings, the focus of designing the neriage phase of the lesson was on deepening students’ understanding and ways of thinking. From the point of view of mathematical value, the lesson should clarify the relative value of the different solutions, generally by contrasting these. The lesson is less likely, obviously, to do this without sufficiently rich and diverse solutions to compare. Therefore, teachers carefully examine anticipated student solutions in detail in order to make sure valuable solutions are likely to appear in the comparison and discussion phase. The value of designing the neriage phase of the lesson lies in its potential to elucidate or expose ways to highlight different solutions, and how to compare them in order to reach the goal of the lesson.

5.4 Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning goes with lesson evaluation

As we have seen, teachers give much thought to the selection and design of the task during the planning phase of Lesson Study. The task is later evaluated during the post-lesson discussion. This is another distinguishing aspect of Lesson Study. The task is not judged based on some abstract determination of whether it is good for teaching a certain skill or concept, but based on concrete evidence from the research lesson of how the students responded to it. In the case of school S, three pairs of data points were added for students to compare, but at the post-lesson discussion teachers argued about whether these additional data were useful or not. The arguments were based on how students actually responded to the task in the lesson. Similar arguments occurred at the other two schools.

In the case of school S, the arguments progressed from evaluating the task to modifying the task. In fact, the final commentator, the knowledgeable other, suggested more direct ways to manipulate numbers to identify faster speed without calculating six pairs of numbers. He gave the example shown in Table  7 of two pairs of numbers in the context of population density:

The final commentator suggested using these numbers instead the six pairs of numbers that were used in the research lesson, as some students struggled to carry out the calculations in the time available, and then missed the educational value of the task, and the whole-class discussion. The post-lesson discussion provided a context for revising the task used at the research lesson, since points missed in planning meetings were revealed in the post-lesson discussion. This shows that the planning meetings of the Lesson Study cycle are closely related to the research lesson itself, and to the post-lesson discussion.

The post-lesson discussion provided a context for revising the task used at the research lesson. However, this does not imply that re-teaching is necssarily part of Japanese Lesson Study. Based on their experience, Japanese teachers know that if students are different then their reactions will be different. They understand that a lesson is itself an organic system, it is not like a machine. A non-organic system, such as a car, is composed of parts that may be easily replaced. However, in organic systems, like a lesson, each part supports the whole ecology. In the case of school S, important ideas missed in planning meetings were revealed in the post-lesson discussion. Teachers then regretted that their kyozai - kenkyu (study or research on teaching materials— see, for example, Watanabe, Takahashi, and Yoshida, 2008 ) was not profound enough and broad enough to cover the idea. In other words, Japanese teachers’ attitude towards research lessons and lesson plans is that their best lesson plan should be implemented at a research lesson, and that a research lesson is the proving ground for teachers (c.f. Lewis and Tsuchida, 1998 ).

6 Conclusion

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 function of the lesson plan, based on case studies of Lesson Study in three Japanese schools.

In each of these case studies, we see that the planning meetings began with a lesson plan already written by the teachers and most of the time was spent discussing the flow of the research lesson. While discussing the flow of the research lesson, teachers spent time designing and adapting the task for the lesson, during which time they typically did the following: consulted the National Course of Study to clarify the position of the task in curriculum, as well as for guidelines in designing and adapting tasks; verified the mathematical value of the task by anticipating student solutions; carefully designed the comparison and discussion ( neriage) phase of the lesson to ensure that the goal of the lesson was reached.

In addition, teachers evaluated the task during the post-lesson discussion in light of the actual student responses in the research lesson, and they also explored how the task might be revised based on this discussion.

Some potentially interesting aspects of lesson planning were not addressed in this paper: the author did not consider the relationship between the quality of the lesson planning and the quality of the research lesson. This paper did not look at the impact of lesson planning on teachers’ mathematical and pedagogical knowledge (Lee and Takahashi 2011 , Lewis 2009). And the paper did not look at how the lesson planning process exposes teachers’ beliefs. The author hopes, however, that by making aspects of the planning phase of Lesson Study visible, this paper will contribute to helping educators outside Japan appreciate the full richness of Lesson Study, and better understand how it can improve teaching and learning.

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Acknowledgments

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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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.”

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

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. Designing and adapting tasks in lesson planning: a critical process of Lesson Study. ZDM Mathematics Education 48 , 411–423 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-016-0770-3

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Accepted : 23 February 2016

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-016-0770-3

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Importance of Lesson Plan  – Latest

Importance of Lesson Plan

The latest post is about the Importance of Lesson Plan . The importance of lesson plans in education remains significant. Lesson planning is a crucial aspect of effective teaching, and its importance is likely to persist in 2023 and beyond. Here are some key reasons why lesson plans are considered essential in education:

• Organized Teaching: Lesson plans help teachers organize their thoughts, materials, and activities in a structured manner. This organization is essential for a smooth flow of instruction and ensures. All the necessary components of the lesson are covered.
• Clear Learning Objectives: A well-designed lesson plan includes clear learning objectives. These objectives articulate what students are expected to learn during the lesson. Having well-defined goals helps both teachers and students stay focused and on track.
• Effective Time Management: Lesson plans assist in effective time management. Teachers can allocate specific time slots to different activities, ensuring. The entire lesson is covered within the allotted class time. This helps prevent rushing through content or having insufficient time for important concepts.
• Adaptability: While lesson plans provide structure, they should also allow for flexibility. Teachers can adapt and modify their plans based on the needs and responses of the students. This adaptability ensures that teaching remains student-centered and responsive to individual learning styles.
• Resource Planning: Lesson plans include a list of materials, resources, and tools needed for the lesson. This ensures that teachers are well-prepared with the necessary teaching aids. Making the learning experience more engaging and effective.

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• Assessment Alignment: Lesson plans often include formative and summative assessment strategies aligned with the learning objectives. This helps teachers gauge student understanding and adjust their teaching methods accordingly.
• Communication Tool: Lesson plans serve as a communication tool between teachers and other stakeholders. Such as administrators, parents, and substitute teachers. They provide a roadmap for what will be covered in the classroom and help maintain consistency in instruction.
• Professional Development: Planning lessons encourages teachers to think critically about their teaching methods and strategies. Reflecting on past lessons and considering what worked well. Or could be improved upon contribute to ongoing professional development.
• Legal and Accreditation Compliance: In some educational settings, lesson plans may be required for compliance with legal standards or accreditation requirements. Having organized and documented plans can be essential for meeting these obligations.
• Student Engagement: Well-planned lessons are more likely to engage students. By incorporating interactive and varied instructional methods, teachers can capture students’ interest and enhance their understanding of the subject matter.

In conclusion, the importance of lesson planning lies in its ability to enhance the quality of education by providing a roadmap for effective teaching. Promoting student engagement and facilitating ongoing professional development for educators.

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