Evaluation of Lesson Plans

The lesson plans that we expect from teachers is vastly different than those that were expected in 1967 when I first began to teach.  When I first began to teach I was given a “lesson plan book.”  That book was made up of several pages of about 3” squares – five across and seven down.  So, we had a 3” square for each of seven periods, five days a week.  Those lesson plan books are still available today and teachers continue to use them.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how a teacher could possible create an excellent lesson plan using those books.  The practical matter is that the textbook became the lesson plan and the “lesson plan book” was just a way to keep track of what chapter and page you were on, when the tests were, etc.  Now, making the assumption that the textbooks were up-to-date and that the textbook company did a good job in presenting the material, I guess that those lesson plans were adequate.

Today, we should be expecting a lot more form education than what we provided in 1967.  I’m just not sure that, in many cases, we do.

Let’s review for a moment the basic components of an effective lesson plan: 

• Gaining Attention & Preparing Students for Learning
• Informing the Students of the Learning Objectives
• Reviewing Prior Learning Related to the Objectives
• Sharing, Modeling and Describing the Content
• Checking for Understanding Through Guided Practice
• Providing Feedback
• Assessing Student Learning and Behavior Through Closure

This is a whole lot more than just writing down “Chapter 2, page 35.”  As we look at the components above we can see that serious consideration must be given to the process of writing effective lesson plans.

Effective lesson plans with the above components can greatly assist the teacher in avoiding some major pitfalls in teaching.  Boredom on the students’ part can be a real deterrent to effective teaching.  By gaining the attention of the students and preparing them for learning you avoid the boredom problem. 

Several years ago, our fifth grade social studies teacher in the building where I was principal came to me with a problem.  She had a particularly unmotivated group of students that year in one of her classes.  As a matter of fact, she affectionately referred to them as the “sweat hogs.”   She said that she had tried everything she could think of and she could not get them motivated.  I told her she was just not approaching it correctly.  I asked her if I could teach her class for two weeks.  My plan was to get the attention of the students and then motivate them to be participants in the learning process. 

You have to understand that these were not bad kids.  They were not trouble makers, they didn’t speak out in class, they were not rude and obnoxious.  They were just not motivated.

The next Monday, I went to school prepared to do my bag of tricks and get those students motivated.  The grand experiment failed!  The primary reason was, I was not prepared.  I thought by me just going into the class to teach these students social studies would be enough to get them interested.  Boy was I wrong.  I went back to the teacher, Mrs. Bell, and told her that I too had failed to get these kids motivated.  Unfortunately, they went all year unmotivated.  I sure wish I could do that all over again.

A few years later I had the good fortune to attend a workshop on creating lesson plans.  This workshop was five days, eight hours a day.  It was really intense.  We discussed a lot more than just lesson plans.  We talked about the entire learning environment and how important lesson plans are in the big picture.  The next time I had an opportunity to teach a class, I used the lesson format that we had studied in this workshop.  It made all the difference.

Every aspect of a lesson plan is important.  It is like a roadmap.  Where do we want to go?  Of course, we want to go where the students learn.  A good lesson plan will take us there.

We may not think that it is important for the students to know what it is that we want them to learn.  However, keeping the learning objectives from the students is like shooting in the dark.  We may hit something, but it probably will not be the objective that we want.  By telling the students up front what the objectives are, will help them to focus in on what they are to learn.

Spending a few minutes reviewing is also important.  Obviously, the objectives that we have today in class tie-in somehow to what we learned yesterday.  Making that tie-in helps the students to focus on the importance of today’s objectives.

The content of the lesson is the real meat of it all.  That is where the information or skills that we want the student to learn is presented to them.  Without this content piece, everything else is meaningless.  As you know, social studies was my love in teaching.  This is where the fun is.

Checking for understanding is also important.  How will you know that the students have learned the necessary information and/or skills?  Checking through guided practice is how.  This can also be a very fun part of the lesson.  I used to do a lot of neat activities with the students during this segment.  I used to make a game out of it as much as possible.  There was always just a pinch of competitiveness in the students.  So, making a game out of the guided practice was an enjoyment for them.  Also, giving rewards was a way I would get the students to try extra hard in this segment.  They loved double recesses.

Finally, providing feedback and assessment is also important.  These two aspects of the lesson plan help the students know that they have achieved the objectives.  Even tests should be a learning experience.  If a student misses some questions on the test, that can be used to reinforce those concepts.

Lesson planning is vital to effective teaching.  There will be no effective teaching without an effective lesson plan.