Danville, West Virginia TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

A lesson plan is defined simply as a teacher's detailed description of the course of instruction for a class. The whole idea about lesson plan was originally created by Benjamin Bloom when he chaired a committee of educational pshologists based in the America education to develop a system of categories of learning behaviour to assist in the design and assessment of education learning. This brought about the Bloom's Taxonomy model. Bloom's Taxonomy refers to a hierarchy of question stems that teachers use to guide their students through the learning process. The Bloom's taxonomy model is defined in three (3) parts or domains: Cognitive domain: This is an aspect of the model which deals intellectual capability thus knowledge and thinking. It also looks at data recall, understanding, application and analysis. Affective Domain: This aspect of the model deals with emotions, feelings and behaviour. This looks at awareness, responds, reaction, values and organisation Psychomotor domain: this deals with manual and physical skills. Thus develop precision, articulation, limitation and manipulation. This model provides an excellent structure for planning, designing, assessing and evaluation training and effectiveness. Lesson plan is an integral part in teaching; it serves as a guide for the teachers. Lesson plan helps teachers to manage their time, effort and resources efficiently. It gives teachers a general idea of things to be taught and learned everyday. It also provides teachers many ways to keep the teaching process not boring and outmoded. Lesson plans makes teaching straightforward. Lesson plan makes the teacher more organized whilst teaching. Lesson plans easily help teachers to achieve their goals and objectives, and same can be said on the part of the students or pupils. It monitors the everyday performance of both teacher and student. It definitely improves your teaching skills. Before any effective lesson plan takes place the teacher should consider the following: Know who your students are. Know their ability levels; backgrounds; interest levels; attention spans; ability to work together in groups; prior knowledge and learning experiences; special needs or accommodations; and learning preferences. This may not happen as quickly as you would like, but it is important to design instruction to meet the needs of the students. Know the materials that are available to help you teach for success. Take and keep an inventory of the materials and resources that are available to you as a teacher. For example: technology, software, audio/visuals, teacher mentors, community resources, equipment, manipulative, library resources, local guest speakers, volunteers. Every lesson plan is centred on some key areas; these areas are as follows: Goals- Identify the aims or outcomes that you want your students to achieve as a result of the lesson you plan to teach. Goals are end products and are sometimes broad in nature. Goals relate directly to the knowledge and skills you identify in part one: content. Objectives- Identify the objectives that you hope your students will achieve in the tasks that will engage them in the learning process. Objectives are behavioural in nature and are specific to performance. Objectives tell what you will be observing in student performance and describe criteria by which you can measure performance against. In many ways, objectives represent indicators of performance that tell you, the teacher, to what extent a student is progressing in any given task. The heart of the objective is the task that the student is expected to perform. It is probably one of the most important parts of the lesson plan because it is student centred and outcomes based. Objectives can range from easy to hard tasks depending on student abilities. Materials- List the materials and resources that will be needed for the lesson to be successful. In this case, you should also list technology resources needed to achieve objectives. Introduction- Describe or list a focusing event or attention grabber that will motivate your students to want to pay attention and learn about what you plan to teach. This will depend on the ages and stages and of the students and will rely on students' interests and backgrounds. Remember, getting your students to attend and respond to your introduction will set the stage for the rest of the lesson. Development- Describe how you plan to model or explain what you want your students to do. Modelling the learning behaviours' you expect of your students is a powerful development tool and provides demonstration that students can then imitate or practice on their own. During development, models of teaching are used to facilitate student learning. Models can include direct instruction, inquiry, information processing strategies, or cooperative learning strategies. Activities- List or describe ways in which you will provide opportunities for your students to practice what you want them to learn. The more opportunities you provide, the better chance they have to master the expected outcomes. These opportunities are in-classroom assignments or tasks gives the teacher the chance to guide and monitor students progress. Independent Practice- List or describe ways to provide opportunities for students to complete assignments to measure progress against the goal of instruction. These assignments are meant to give teachers the chance to determine whether students have truly mastered the expected outcomes without any guidance. Accommodations- List or describe ways that you will differentiate instruction according to students' needs. This can include any curricular adaptations that are needed to meet special needs students. Checking for Understanding- List or describe ways that you will check for understanding. Assessment and ongoing feedback are necessary for monitoring progress. This can include questioning, conferencing, or journal writing/reflection writing. Closure- List or describe ways that you can wrap up a lesson. This can include telling students the most important concepts that were covered in the lesson, asking them what they thought were the key concepts (or what they learned), or preparing them for the next lesson building upon what was presented. The key is to leave your students with an imprint of what you hoped to achieve in any given lesson. Teacher Reflection- This section is to be completed after lesson. It represents what you think worked, or what did not work, and why. It is meant to give you some insight into practice and will hopefully help you to make adjustments and modifications where necessary.