Lesson Planning

Planning your lesson

To a college educator, the idea of planning a lesson might conjure images of a K-12 classroom. However, this process is a valuable yet often overlooked part of preparing for class meetings. When prepared with the appropriate things in mind, your lesson plan serves as a roadmap to a specific destination or outcome. It prioritizes learning outcomes and implements carefully chosen instructional and assessment strategies, focused on maximizing the experience and learning for your students. 

Lesson planning starts with learning objectives

When planning your lesson, learning objectives are key. An effectively planned lesson is sure to address the following questions:

• What should learners be able to do by the end of the lesson?
• What are my learning goals that I want to achieve?
• Are my learning goals learner-focused and measurable?
• What prerequisite knowledge or skills will learners need?
  • If so, what materials will be needed in advance?
  • Is remediation available if needed?

Additionally, you’ll want to ensure that your lesson plan includes an introduction, reinforcement, and, over time, assessments that build toward larger, course-level outcomes.

Identify your instructional strategies

As you outline your lesson plan, you’ll also want to consider effective instructional strategies to help convey your content to your students. How best might your material be covered (by a video, assigned reading, or direct instruction)? Are practice activities necessary?  What resources will learners need to perform these activities successfully?  What resources or tools will be needed for instruction? 

Your instructional strategies should accomplish several goals:

• Alignment with your learning objectives
• Alignment with your assessment strategies
• Apply relevance to your content
• Deliver content in a straightforward and diverse manner.

Plan your assessments while you plan your lesson

An effective lesson plan also articulates an assessment of learning to determine if the stated outcomes are reached. In planning your assessments, ask yourself, “What actions would learners perform to provide evidence they’ve met the outcomes?” Think about how a learner might present that knowledge, through a behavior, a performance, or a demonstration of a skill. Although objective tests can be used, they don’t always promote retention/transfer of knowledge in applied scenarios, so consider this in planning, along with the types or levels of assessment. (i.e., diagnostic, formative, summative).

Finalize your plan

Once you have all the pieces of your lesson plan outlined, it is time to put them together into a  formal “Lesson Plan”. This plan will include everything you intend to do throughout your class meeting. Your final planned lesson should include:

• Create anticipation for the topic, activating prior knowledge, and explaining relevance. 
• Transparently share the learning outcomes expected.
• Vary teaching methods to promote engagement and application. Use transitions every 15 minutes to maintain learner engagement. 
• Utilize multimodal interactivity: learner-to-content, learner-to-educator, and learner-to-learner. 
• Use modeling or guided practice along with formative assessment. 
• Encourage independent practice and reference to later summative assessments. 
• Encourage learner metacognition or self-reflection on the concepts/process/progress to enhance retention and knowledge
• Provide closure of the topic, reiterating its value and connection to future topics or outcomes. 

Reflection

After the lesson, reflect on what went well. Were the learning outcomes effectively met with these methods and resources? What evidence do you have of learning and understanding? How does this inform your next lesson? Are there adaptations you might make next time? 

Additional resources 

Algonquin College. (n.d.). Lesson plan template

Boston College Libraries. (2017). Technology tools for lesson plans: Getting started

University of Michigan. (n.d.). Sample lesson plans

References

Gagné, R.M., Briggs, L.J, Wager, W.W. (1992). Principles of Instructional Design. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomason Learning. 

Hunter, M. C. (1982). Master Teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.  

McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2012). Understanding by Design Framework. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.