A Good Lesson Plan is Hard to Find

   

      Initially I was having trouble with how to start this blog post, but I started thinking about the words good lesson plan, which then morphed into the pun A Good Lesson Plan is Hard to Find. Like the grandmother in that Flannery O'Conner story , as a student I did not necessarily want to be going along on the educational journey set before me, but it was a trip that I couldn't afford to miss. The grandmother finds herself going to Florida with her son and his family despite having a murderer dubbed The Misfit being on the loose. She's plunked in the back seat between her two bratty grandchildren who are slap fighting each other over her. This is not the most enjoyable of car rides. Her clothes are described as being very fancy and that, "her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady." I too wanted people to know that I was serious about learning, but not everyone rolls at the same pace in a classroom. This is going to be the range of feelings in the audience you'll have as a teacher. It's a mixed bag, but if a teacher is prepared well, they can handle even the greatest of disasters.

     One thing that I think is critically important is considering the group size and the variety within those groups when doing cooperative segments in a lesson plan. I find that I work best in the smallest available group possible. Even when it's a group of five versus having a discussion with an entire class of 30 people, there's a noticeable difference in participation. That methodology of keeping it manageable and intimate can prevent students who are reluctant to talk from being overwhelmed because the stakes are too high. Also lesson plans require smooth transitions between activities. If students have unclear instruction or there isn't enough time taken to clarify and ask questions between actives, chances are good that the lesson is going to flop. Time and behavior management are important things to keep in mind too. If a lesson is well constructed and students are being held accountable for their actions at all times, there won't be room for problems. See the dad's elegant solution to baby mayhem above. All three children have dividers between their car seats to prevent fights. Naturally we can't have out students in their own study carrels or wearing blinders all day, but steps need to be taken.

As far as the content of the lesson plans is concerned, factoring in the strata of thinking that Bloom's Taxonomy and Vygotsky's ZPD provides, there needs to be an appropriate blend of higher and lower level thinking tasks that are relevant to the task and relevant to student needs. I know that the best lessons are the ones that strive for things beyond memorization and look to analyzing and creating to demonstrate knowledge, but the foundation skills have to come first or the house comes crashing down. According to most people I've encountered in the education department, the best and easiest way to start a lesson plan is to come up with an end goal or assessment and work backwards. I find that planning is so much easier this way because I don't stress out about how much time I'm going to be allotted or what the objectives are. Those are answers that come to me through working over the material. Sometimes of course that means changing things because of certain limitations, but Understanding By Design helps a teacher to see the holes in their thought processes and course correct to arrive at that destination with little to no trouble.