Module 9: Lesson Planning Ideas

As I've stated in previous blog posts, I haven't had any experience in a classroom as a teacher and this is my first session studying teaching. I have done some tutoring but this hasn't required me to design a formal lesson plan and so I don't have any experience in constructing or executing lesson planning. 
A concern I would have in writing a lesson plan would be catering for a diverse classroom. I'm unsure to what degree a teacher can predict the learning needs of each student in such a class and so I assume lesson plans would need to be quite flexible in terms of their content and timing. I have found research that suggests that effective teaching in terms of lesson plans were characterized by more opportunistic and flexible in teaching, being able to adjust to task demands (Wolff, van den Bogert, Jarodzka, & Boshuizen, 2015) as well as being able to improvise (Sorensen, 2016).
I'm unsure when constructing a lesson plan how to predict for days when students are particularly unresponsive to a task. Tsui (2003) recommends achieving constant engagement by exploration and experimentation, producing lesson plans that are able to be responsive to challenges as they occur. I'm curious how this would be achieved in a planning stage, whether that involves allowing additional time in lessons so that there is room to adjust lesson plans on the fly. I'm interested to gain some insight on this from more experienced teachers within the course. 


References
Sorensen, N. (2016). Improvisation and teacher expertise: Implications for the professional development of outstanding teachers. Professional Development in Education, pp. 1-17. 
Tsui, A. B. (2003). Understanding expertise in teaching: Case studies of ESL teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 


Wolff, C. E., van den Bogert, N., Jarodzka, H., & Boshuizen, H. P. (2015). Keeping an eye on learning: Differences between expert and novice teachers' representations of classroom management events. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), pp. 68-85. 

Comments

  1. Unknown11 October 2017 at 00:03

    Hi Lauren,

    I really enjoyed reading your blog, and I also have limited experiences in lesson planning and have similar feelings towards some fears about student engagement. As my studies continue, I am starting to feel that the perfect lesson does not exists and that as teacher's our role is to do our best to create engaging and positive learning environments. There is a lot of research to suggest that technology is a strong avenue to promote student engagement, but there are also other factors that need to be considered including student well being and the physical environment of the school campus (Asiyai, 2014).

    Asiyai, R. (2014). Students' Perception of the Condition of Their Classroom Physical Learning Environment and Its Impact on Their Learning and Motivation. College Student Journal, 48(4), 716-726.

    ReplyDelete

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