Key points in developing lesson plans

Posted by chalkie

December 28, 2006

It only takes a quick Google search to reveal countless lesson plans available for ‘free’ download from across the internet. But how do you tell the difference between a well written lesson plan and a poorly prepared one? What should you be looking for in a lesson plan, and what points should you be covering off when preparing lesson plans of your own?

I will attempt to outline below my key requirements for a good lesson plan, and hopefully you will be able to apply this as a template, of sorts, for the development of your own plans. I’m sure that for a majority of readers, the concepts covered here will be considered old news, but I thought, given the proliferation of lesson plans on the internet, a recap on what makes a good lesson plan may be useful.

Subject Area: What is the key subject area covered in this lesson? Mathematics? Science? Social Studies?

Lesson Title/Activity Name: Give your lesson a catchy title, make it interesting for yourself and your students!

Age/Grade Level: What age or grade level is this lesson suitable for?

Time Required: How much time would a teacher require to effectively carry out the lesson? How much preparation time is involved for the teacher?

Learning Objectives (Purpose of lesson): Outline your objectives for the lesson. Objectives can be behavioral or knowledge based. What do you expect your students to be able to do upon completion of the lesson? What would you expect them to know as a result of this lesson?

Materials Needed: Compile a complete list of all the materials required in order to deliver this lesson. In some instances there will be next to nothing required, in others (and particularly early years) lessons may be more material intensive. If possible allocate some sort of estimated budget to the material list.

Instructions: This section involves detailing the steps involved in delivering the lesson. Keep it simple and to the point. Describe the sequence of events in order. What should the teacher instruct the student to do? How should the teacher guide the students through the lesson? One tip I was given early on, was to think of a lesson as a movie. A movie needs a strong introduction, main body and conclusion if it’s going to impact positively on the audience. A lesson should be approached in exactly the same way.

Sources/References: If you’ve used any other sources or references in developing your lesson plan you should reference those here.

Evaluation/Results: This is perhaps the most important part of a lesson plan as it allows you to recap what has happened. If you set solid objectives, evaluation should be relatively easy. Look at what happened, what worked, and what didn’t work so well. Be critical, but not too critical. How could you improve upon this lesson if you were to deliver it again in the future?

So there you have it. All fairly simple and self explanatory. I hope people find this useful.

p.s
Please excuse spelling and grammatical errors, it’s late and I’m tired!