|
Finally, you say, We get to the reason why I
am here in the first place. . . to learn how to write a lesson plan.
Attempting to write a lesson plan without
prior planning would be the same as the old classic example of "Getting the cart
before the horse." Prior to putting a pen to paper to develop a lesson plan, you
should have already completed and researched your subject material and carefully reviewed
and developed your training objectives, and determined which method or methods of
instruction you will use.
This is the first step in any instructional
design, these steps help you consider how best to present your course material based
on the psychology of learning, these are the critical first steps leading to your success as an
instructor. If you skip any of these steps in the process and jumped straight-in and
started writing your lesson plan, then you may have unknowingly decided to sell both
yourself and your potential students short as well!
The time you invest in doing your homework is
a very small price to pay in comparison to the pay back you may receive once you reach the
classroom and see all those faces staring at you.
Nevertheless, before we get into the actual mechanics of writing a lesson plan, you
should have already completed your (a must do step!) "Research" of the subject
material . Question; is an instructor expected to be a research scientist or a specialist?
Not exactly. Instructional research is nothing more than getting together all available information
you can on your subject then use what is relevant
information for your lesson plan. You may think your an expert on your subject matter.
So doing your homework will
only reinforce your knowledge and your status if you are one. An expert that is, or you
might want to define the true meaning to the words "expert or assume."
An important part of doing your research is it allows you review all supporting materials
and training aids that could or will be used along with the lesson plan to support your training
program and your training objectives. During this phase its important to
consider and develop your training sequence and trainer notes and checklists)
that will be as guides throughout the course of instruction.
Proper
sequencing of training is an very important part of your planning prior to
writing your lesson plan. Why? Because you want your training to flow in a
natural of order of things. Let's take a simple thing like putting your
shoes on. The first step of course is finding them, second step is making
sure you put them on the right foot. Sounds simple huh! Now, lets assume
your teaching a child how to put there shoes on for the first time! Now
you have to stop and think about what sequence is best to use to insure
the child learns how to perform this simple task by themselves, but to a
child this is not a simple task. In some training environments you will
need to develop a pre-training checklist, these checklist are normal used
to insure the trainer has all the required training supplies and equipment
available and ready to use during training. And finally, writing trainer
notes, these trainer notes are used to alert the trainer they need to do
something. The trainers note can be anything from telling the trainer to emphasize
a main teaching point or procedure
to use or which graphics to use next. Normally these trainers notes
are written into the lesson plan where a new trainer can clearly read
them.
And of course they must be checked for
accuracy and usefulness, and are they current and up to date? Before you begin writing
your lesson plan, you need to answer these questions . . . will this help me and my
students meet their learning goals and our training objective (s)? "Theirs is
too learn and yours is to teach them actually."
Let me say it again, about doing your homework
first! The magical word here is You
benefit directly from all this research that
you do up-front, because, you become
more knowledgeable and current on the subject material that you are about to teach your
students."
Your job is to teach your training objectives,
not passing on what your "Grand Papa or Grand Ma" told you how they did it in
the great winter of 1864. Your students might enjoy the story and could certainly be
amused by it. However, they won't be very amused when they find out you can't answer
their questions on the material you are teaching them.
Next, you must incorporate all of your
objectives into the lesson plan. Objectives are the foundation, the base of the entire
instructional pyramid. Presenting them to your students is the most important part of your
instructional lesson plan development process.
I know this may be a bit redundant, but if it
was not that important, we would continue on. But it is, so let's do a quick review again
to highlight some of the main points of an "objective."
The Objective statement:
The objective statements in your lesson plan
must be clear, honest, complete, and unquestionably correct!
A complete objective will contain a:
Task: (Description
of Performance) The objective statement contains an action verb that describes doing
something that can be seen and measured.
Condition:
(Conditions under which behavior will be
observed) The objective statement will contain the conditions under which action will take
place.
Standard:
(The standards the students must meet) The
last part of the complete objective statement is the standard of effectiveness. They set
the standards of skills which must accomplish before the learner is considered to be
proficient at performing a given task or tasks.
THE LESSON PLAN FORMAT!
Somewhere I read that it would safe bet to
say, there must be a 1,000 or mare ways to do a lesson plan. There also must be at least
10 different ways to format each one of them. Who ever said that is right! The point here
is, this is a means to an end. The best constructed lesson plans on paper will not make
you a great instructor/trainer, nor will it make your students motivated and retain the
information your presenting or even like you. And yes. It's very true, there is a whole
lot more to being a good instructor/trainer than your lesson plan format. Please do not
get wrapped around a lesson plan format. This is merely a written outline for you to use
to disseminate information from, ensuring you cover everything, and do it within your
allotted time frame.
What follows is a good guide to use for a
lesson plan. But you need to make this work for you and use it as a tool that you can use
and teach from. And remember the lesson plan. . . outlines what will be taught and the
order of disseminated information.
Formatting of your lesson plan using the
typical outline format seems to be the acceptable general methods used in most training
environments, exception to that is, if there is a predetermined lesson plan format policy
where you are teaching at.
To list a few purposes of a lesson plan:
- Consistency of information from class to
class.
- Records what will be taught so that a back-up
instructor can disseminate the same information in your absence.
- Allows for planning of the class length.
- Allows for revisions based on student
evaluation. If it is not written down, how do you know what to revise?
During the course we will discuss more about
lesson plan on there formats.
Now, we get to play a little with pictures and things, because our next topic is creating visual aids Go there now or go back
to the top! It's your choice! |
