This is a quick guide with questions you might ask yourself about your lesson/ unit plan to check that are considering the most essential points while planning.
1. Why do we teach..?
Let’s start with this video to help us understand why thinking about the goal of your lesson/ plan is the first step to achieving students’ learning. Please click to view.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan and ask yourself:
- Why do I teach? Is this reflected in my planning?
- Who do I teach? Are my learners at the center of my planning?
- Why do I teach? Is this reflected in my planning?
2. Goal vs. Activities
One way to start planning is to select some activities you think your students will enjoy and then try to organize them together as a lesson or unit. The problem with this is that we can lose the focus, and move too far from what the goal of all these activities actually is. Moreover, choosing activities first rather than learning goals tends to not allow for differentiation, as these activities generally require all students to show their learning in the same way. See the difference between both processes:
Source: https://teaching.cambriancollege.ca/studio/backwards-planning/#1532372758719-5b1d9546-624f
In this example, a “backward design” process is recommended for planning because it allows more flexibility and focus and takes a more student-centred approach. The video below explains the step-by-step process of planning using backward design.
Personally, I like to do a brainstorm of all my resource and activity ideas around a central theme (because that’s often where my excitement and creativity lie!). Then, however, I set it aside and look to the curriculum for the specific content and competencies that are important for my students to learn/practice at a specific point in the year. Once I’ve established the learning goals, I’ll break them down into a progression of lessons and outcomes. Now I’m ready to get inspired again and look back at the resources I set aside to see if or where they might fit (or not!)
Do you want more examples? This Cult of Pedagogy blog post will be of interest. Dr. Shelley Moore offers examples of Inclusive design templates and frameworks that align with a backwards design model.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Did you start by choosing the activity or the learning goal? (if you started with the activity, look at it again and ask yourself “does this activity help students achieve the learning targets?”)
- Can you identify pieces of evidence that your lesson/unit is focusing on learning goals rather than being merely a set of activities?
3. Write good learning goals (Part 1)
Defining learning goals is essential to a effective plan. The image below describes the features and examples of what a well-defined learning goal looks like:
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Is your learning goal…
- Clear and specific?
- Measurable?
- Concise?
- Tied into course/curricular objectives?
- Is your learning goal…
4. Write good learning goals (Part 2)
When we are choosing our learning goals it is essential to pay attention to the ones that are similar to each other so that we can plan in a more focused way. Look at these three learning goals from the BC Math Curriculum (grade 3):
- “Fractions are numbers that represent an amount or quantity”.
- “Fractions can represent parts of a region, set, or linear model”.
- “Fraction parts are equal shares or equal-sized portions of a whole or unit”.
Even though they are similar and these learning goals are all likely part of a unit of teaching, they likely aren’t part of a single lesson and teachers will want to plan different activities and assessments to achieve each one of them.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Are your learning goals related?
- In what ways do the lessons/activities help students achieve these goals?
- How do you know students have achieved the goals?
5. Connecting the why and what
In the BC Curriculum, we can interpret the Big Ideas as the “why” we teach and the content and competency as the “what” we teach, or in other words, the learning goals.
Now it’s your turn:
Look at your lesson/unit plan:
-
- Do the curricular competencies and content work together to support learning around the big ideas?
6. Who are my students?
We do not plan for imaginary students but for the ones we have in our classes. Thus, it is essential to think about the student profiles and how to adapt your lessons to their needs and, potentially, their interests.
Tomlinson (2001) proposes a model to think about different student features we can consider while planning our lessons:
Source: Tomlinson, Carol A (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Have you thought about specific features of individual students and of your class profile (links to a set of Shelley Moore’s resources to help you create student & class profiles)?
- Have you planned for all your students? Are there ‘access points’ for all (See Shelley Moore’s video titled ‘Dr. Baked Potato’ for an engaging and meaningful analogy about designing for complexity and finding access points)
- Do you have more than one way for students to achieve the same goal?
7. Classroom setting
Our lessons happen in a space (physical or online). Thus it is important to think about how we will organize this space for each moment of the lesson. Tomlinson (2001) gives some ideas of how a teacher can organize that space:
Source: Tomlinson, Carol A (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Have you planned the space for each moment of your class?
- Behavioral expectations. How can different class instructional arrangements be used to deal with students’ behavior?
- How can different classroom arrangements support your learning goals and students’ behavior?
8. Time
Our lessons also happen between some time frame. In this sense, it is not reasonable to plan the best lesson/ unit if they can not be implemented within the time limit you have.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Are your learning goals achievable within the time limit you have?
- Do you have suggested times for each moment?
- How many minutes are teacher-focused
- How many minutes are student-focused?
9. What is next?
The last step in planning a lesson/ unit is to think about what is my next learning goal and how I can connect it to the current one. In other words, it is essential to think about the learning trajectory of my students and how I will support their progression.
It is important to understand how each learning goal is connected with the others. The BC Ministry of Education provides Learning Progressions to allow us to visualize and plan for curricular and cross-curricular learning.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan:
- Have you planned the progression of your learning goals?
- Do you know your next goals and how they are connected to the current one?
10. Warm-up and end-up moments
Now that you have a good notion of your goals and the progression of you lesson/ unit, you can ensure the warm-up and end-up moments (opener/activating strategy and closure help to create coherence throughout your whole lesson/unit.
Now it’s your turn:
- Look at your lesson/unit plan. Consider:
- How you will start this class?
- How will you provide closure?
- Why did you make these choices?
- How do they connect to the rest of the lesson?
- Does your opening and closing help to start and complete a discreet cycle of learning? Are there opportunities to extend learning or signals of where you are headed?
More resources to support your lesson/unit plan
- Blogs posts in the Scarfe Sandbox
- Moore, Shelley. Inclusive Curriculum Design Website
- Queens University Matching Assessments to Learning Outcomes: ICE model (Ideas, Connections, Extensions)
- Tomlinson, Carol A (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms
- Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. ASCD
Guest post by Peer Mentor Ariane Faria dos Santos (Ph.D. EDCP), Aug. 2024.
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