Lesson planning is a well thought out framework or road map of what students are going to learn and by which ways it is achieved. In simple term, it is a blueprint of content as well as method of teaching. But, prior to do that it is equally important to consider: learning objectives, means of learning or learning activities, and assessment to test progress. Let’s dive deeper to unfold lesson planning steps and strategies for better learning outcomes.
Understanding lesson planning
Precisely speaking, lesson planning is a well thought out goal oriented framework, road map, or blueprint. It includes content to be taught, how it will be taught, and strategies that will be used to test or assess the learning of students. In order to make it more simple, let’s break it down in different components:
1.Learning objectives
It includes what student will learn and will he able to do that comfortably. And for what purpose he should learn that.
2.Learning resources
Without authentic, relevant, and updated learning resource like textbooks, workbooks, websites, the process of learning will not be completed.
3. Learning activities
By what means the learning will be performed is highly important. It may be group discussion, lecture, or anything suitable.
4.Testing tool or assessment
As I described earlier that mere transfering content isn’t sufficient but it needs to be tested. We need to assess will the student do the learnt things on its own comfortably? If yes, the goal is achieved. Quizzes, questions, assignment, presentation can be used to test students learning.
5.Time period of lesson
All need to be done within a stipulated timeframe. For that a fix time period should be used.
In order to understand lesson planning in detail, let’s study the five steps lesson planning model of J. Friedrich Herbert.
Herbert’s five step lesson planning method
J. Friedrich Herbert : He was German psychologist. In 1776, he gave five stepped lesson planning method. It is a traditional way of lesson planning that mainly focuses on the sequence of instructions. His method has widely been used in the various countries. He gave following method: Preparation, presentation, association, generalization, and application.
1. Preparation: preparing ground for lesson
In the first step, instructor or teacher should focus on the cultivating learning appetite among learners about topic he is going to teach. To achieve this, teacher should activate prior knowledge regarding topic he is going to teach. And, generate need for newer knowledge. For this, simply, he need to connect newer knowledge to what students already have. Here, instructor can employ strategy of raising questions, generating curiosity, suspense etc.
Storytelling, interactive questioning, real world examples can be useful in activating prior knowledge of student regarding topic he is going to deliver.
If the topic is ‘ecosystem’ you can ask questions about wildlife including animals, birds, forests. You can empower them to recall whatever they saw in their past if they visited zoo, parks, gardens, etc. By doing so, students will feel motivated and become curious to know newer knowledge regarding their earlier one.
2. Presentation: presenting knowledge
Once the students become curious to know newer things, knowledge, or information, introduce your topic or lesson you planned. For that to work perfectly, explain it in a simple manner. Better to use popular day to day examples. Mere transfering dead information will not work. Let’s see various means to teach content.
a) Day to day examples
Teacher can use day to day examples to connect prior to newer knowledge.
b) visual aids
It includes, flow charts, diagrams, documentaries, pictures, etc to make newer knowledge more appealing and real. It will help student to grasp easily.
c) Act-out activities or practicing empathy
Empower students to play role of different characters to get better insight of situation. It is one of the better means to understand concepts.
d) Telling stories, movie scenes
By telling stories or popular movie scenes can help to grasp knowledge in a effective manner.
3. Association: connect, compare, contrast
Once the students grast new knowledge and information, ask them to connect with prior one. Herbert called this step as ‘Association’. To do so, students need to connect newer knowledge to prior one, compare them, and find out similarities and dissimilarities. At last, they can easily find out general patterns among both.
4. Generalization: applying discovered pattern
Prior to this step, students identified commonality between prior and newer knowledge. By synthesizing them they will form concepts and rules. We can call it newer knowledge. They can apply such knowledge to learn, and solve problems regarding to the learnt topic.
5. Application : use of learnt knowledge
Using learnt knowledge in need is called application. They will feel more motivated to use such knowledge to solve real world problems.
So, these are the five steps of lesson planning given by Herbert. This method is a beautiful outline of various instructions organized by instructor to teach students. By this means, learning would be fun instead pain. Cognitive domain of bloom’s taxonomy