Use a Lesson Plan Checklist to Organize Your Instructional Plans

By?Ruzanna Hernandez, Ed.D .

Introduction

As an educator, you spend hours planning lessons.?You want the lessons to be as effective as possible to maximize learning.?So much goes into planning a lesson, including:

• An introduction that gets students interested in the topic
• The learning objective and how it implicitly affects students
• The actual delivery of instruction
• Specific ways to check for students' understanding
• The practice or?demonstration of learning
• Strong engagement
• The classroom environment
• A good lesson closure
• And more

Planning is a critical component of a good lesson.?The more you plan and rehearse how the lesson will go in your mind, the better prepared you will be as the instructor.?Planning requires an?organized, step-by-step process to keep it all together .?Begin with the end goal in mind using your curriculum maps or pacing guides, then?work backward . For example, if the unit you are teaching is on poetry, by when should you have the unit completed??What?final assessment will show students learned ?what you taught them??How many days do you have, in total, to teach that content??Between today and the day of the final assessment on poetry, what will you teach each day??How will you teach each day's lesson???

Once you have determined what topic you will teach each day leading up to the final unit assessment, you can start planning for each day's lesson.?The best approach to lesson planning is to construct an?entire week's lesson plans ?over the weekend.?What will you do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.??Make sure you take into account holidays and other school events that might take time away from what you want to get done. Once you have the lessons planned for the entire week, you must take a quick peek the day before teaching the lesson to make minor adjustments and revisions.?

The following section has a guide to help you ask yourself some questions to stay organized and efficient for each day's lesson as you plan.??

Questions to Ask After You Have Planned a Lesson

Once you have determined what you will teach each day leading up to the final assessment, you can begin lesson planning.?Ensure that you have as effective a plan as possible that engages students, helps break down the material in ways they can easily understand, and suits well with your classroom management.?Once you feel you have a lesson plan done, ask each of these questions to make minor revisions if necessary.?

• Do I have a?clear objective ?for the lesson that students can understand??

Example: I can give 3 reasons why the Louisiana purchase made an impact upon the US economy.

• ?Is the objective of the?lesson purposeful ?(explains the WHY)?

Example: I can give 3 reasons why the Louisiana purchase made an impact upon the US economy and why that is important for us to understand.

• ?Do I have an introduction to the lesson?
• ?Have I timed each section to ensure it’s not me talking for more than 15 to 20 minutes of the lesson?
• ?Did I include questions to ask students to?check their understanding ?
• ?Overall, is the lesson interactive?

Kids will be more engaged if you do some intentional planning to make it interactive (much like conversational).

• ?Is there student collaboration involved?
• ?Is there?academic vocabulary ?I need to go over prior to the lesson?

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