Now that you have a clear destination (Stage 1) and a way to measure your success in getting there (Stage 2), you are ready to start planning how you will achieve your end goal. Lesson plans are a road map to facilitate teaching and learning. Lesson planning is an important aspect of effective teaching because it focuses the teaching on the students; however, lesson planning can seem overwhelming and laborious. In this section, you will learn about the third stage in the Backward Design process to design lessons that transcend the simple transfer of knowledge.

Stage 3: Planning Instruction & Learning Experiences

The third stage of Backward Design focuses on the instruction the teacher will deliver, and the activities learners will participate in. Wiggins & McTighe (2005, p. 13) suggest that teachers should consider the following questions:

• What enabling knowledge and skills will students need to perform effectively?
• What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills?
• What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught?
• What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?
• Is the overall design coherent and effective?

Considering these questions at the start of the planning process helps the teacher identify what instruction is necessary and what instructional strategies might be most effective in reaching their students. Also, these questions focus the teacher on what actions the students must take to practice the skills during learning activities.

Components of a Lesson

To start discussing how to design quality lessons, we should outline the components needed in a lesson plan. Robert Gagne, an instructional theorist, surmised that there was a nine-step process for creating good instruction. In his book The Conditions of Learning, published in 1965, Gagne outlined the Nine Events of Instruction (CourseArc, 2019).

Image created by CourseArc licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Looking at Gagne’s model, you may wonder how you accomplish all those tasks. Gagne’s model does suggest a logical progression through each of the events of instruction. However, not every lesson will feature all nine events, and they may not follow that order. But in general, every lesson will include at least the four basic components of objectives, presentation, practice, and assessment in some way. One thing that is not clearly defined in Gagne’s model but is supported by other researchers is the active roles students should take in the learning process.

Active learning is any activity or strategy that encourages students to engage in the learning process. Participating in active learning activities increases students’ critical thinking skills, retention of information, motivation, and interpersonal skills (Prince, 2004). Typically, these strategies involve students working together during class but may also be completed individually. If you are looking for instructional strategies to actively engage your students (or lesson ideas), then you might consider exploring the resources curated by the K20 Center. The K20 Center resource includes a range from short, simple activities like journal writing, problem-solving, and paired discussions to longer activities like case studies, role plays, and structured team-based learning. Active learning doesn’t have to take much of your learning time. Giving students just a minute or two to check their understanding of recent material, practice a skill, or identify gaps in their understanding before explaining will help to keep them engaged in your lesson. Before we move on to the next step of planning how you will provide students the opportunity to practice skills, it might be beneficial to briefly explore the topic of lesson planning templates and a common model of instruction.

Lesson Planning Templates*

Lesson plans are meant to support you, not constrain or frustrate you. A lesson plan template provides the following: 1) structure; 2) a logical progression, 3) an emphasis on student engagement, 4) a focus on learning goals and objectives, 5) accountability for skills taught, and 6) an opportunity for teacher reflection. With any template, it will appear that there are phases or stages. In reality, lesson plans are more fluid. At their core, they should have a warm-up/review, an opportunity to explore new content, an opportunity to practice/apply this information, a means by which the instructor can be sure learning is happening, and a wrap-up/review. You may go into the practice phases multiple times in one lesson, depending on how much new information you wish to explore with your students. You also may not have a separate assessment phase, as it can be woven into the other two phases.

Here are some common lesson plan templates you might consider.

• 5E Lesson Plan Template
• Gradual Release Lesson Planning Template

When it comes to using a lesson template, the key is to find one that works for you. If you can’t find one, make one. To assist you in the creation of your personalized lesson plan template, explore the following list of common lesson plan components. You will see a heading of the component along with a brief descriptor. Click on each heading for more detailed information, including why you would use this component, additional information, and a list of possible section headings within your template.

Explicit Instruction/Gradual Release Model

There are multiple models of instruction suggested throughout the education literature. However, explicit instruction and the Gradual Release Model are two similar ideas that align with Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction. Both models suggest that the cognitive load of a lesson should gradually shift from the teacher to the student. These models are where the “I Do, We Do, You Do” terminology originated. Knowing these models allows us to discuss how to design practice opportunities to help your students master the skills you have identified as necessary to meet your learning objectives. With that said, it is also important to recognize that these models are not a fixed method. In the video below, you will learn that you can mix the order of the model to best fit your activity.

Direct Instruction

With a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish in your lesson and how you will measure student success, you are now ready to plan how to deliver the information students need to know. One of the most efficient and effective methods to deliver new information to students is through direct instruction (Hattie, 2012; Lemov, 2015). Direct instruction describes portions of a lesson where the teacher explains concepts and models steps to complete the desired task. Common lesson planning formats, such as the I Do, We Do, You Do outline, use direct instruction during the teacher portion, known as the “I Do.” We will break down the components below.

Often, direct instruction has been viewed as teacher-centered, with students acting as passive recipients of knowledge during an extended lecture (See this blog post for more about misconceptions about direct instruction). However, Lemov (2015) argues that “effective teachers often use direct instruction much differently—with questions and short discussion points and engagement strategies embedded within it, and generally for periods closer to ten or fifteen minutes, whereupon it gives way to guided and independent practice (p. 148).” Through a script, teachers can ensure that they provide a clear and concise learning experience for their students, where they elicit student engagement through questions and address any misconceptions students might have.

Guided Practice

According to the Gradual Release Model, after you introduce new learning to your students, you should then guide them through a similar task. This should be a collaborative process where the teacher and students complete a model similar to what students will later be asked to do independently. This process serves two purposes. One, it allows your students an opportunity to clarify any misconceptions they might have. Two, you have the opportunity to assess how well your direct instruction was internalized. Through the guided process, you will notice if you need to re-teach portions or if your students are ready to move on to independent work. In your lesson plan, you should describe practice activities for students to use the content you just taught. You should plan prompts and questions ahead of time that you will use.

Independent Practice

Once your students have had an opportunity to practice new skills with your guidance, it is time to allow them to practice independently, with a partner, or in small groups. Teachers often assign independent practice as homework, thinking they will just grade the assignment the next day. However, if we simply assign independent work to be done outside of class, we rob our students of the opportunity for immediate feedback, and we cannot ensure how the work was completed or even if the work is indeed from a particular student. Therefore, setting time aside each day for students to practice will provide you and your students with a great service. In your lesson plan, you should describe practice activities for students to demonstrate mastery of the new material you have just taught.

Monitoring Student Progress

Students require regular feedback while learning new information. Hattie (2012) suggests that teachers should help students answer the questions of where am I going, how am I doing, and where do I go next? To help teachers do that, Shute (2007) proposed the following guidelines for using feedback to enhance learning.

• Focus feedback on the task, not the learner
• Provide elaborated feedback to enhance learning
• Present elaborated feedback in manageable units
• Be specific and clear with feedback messages
• Keep feedback as simple as possible but no simpler(based on learner needs and instructional constraints)
• Reduce uncertainty between performance and goals
• Give unbiased, objective feedback, written or via computer
• Promote a learning goal orientation via feedback
• Provide feedback after learners have attempted a solution

The ability to obtain feedback when learning new skills plays an important role in the learning process. Students should be allowed to practice new skills where they can get immediate feedback from the teacher (Popham & Baker, 1970). Teachers should plan practice sessions and monitor student thinking throughout lessons. You have worked on planning guided and independent practice sessions, so the next logical step is to plan how you will monitor student progress toward your learning objectives and provide appropriate feedback. Aggressive Monitoring is commonly used to assess student work and provide immediate feedback. Bambrick-Santoyo (2016) argues that monitoring during independent practice is the most important opportunity you have as a teacher to positively influence student learning. Check out the detailed blog post from Meghan Thompson about how to plan and execute effective monitoring of student practice sessions to respond to student needs and misconceptions in real-time. Be sure to check out:

• Example pathway
• Tracking sheet
• Videos
  • Aggressive Daily Monitoring Enables In-the-Moment Adjusting
  • Aggressive Monitoring McDonald END Clip 001 HD

Engage & Closure

Effective lessons frame the introduction of new learning, practice, and assessment with an introduction and conclusion. The introduction component of a lesson is often referred to as the hook, anticipatory set, or engagement. Regardless of what you call it, the purpose is to engage student interest and attempt to activate some prior knowledge to prepare students for the learning session you have planned.

The introduction of your lesson does not have to be very long in duration, but it should be engaging. You can use this opportunity to review past material. A common practice is to include a Do Now activity, sometimes called bellwork, at the start of class. This is a useful practice to help support any entry routines you have set up at the beginning of the year, as it gives students something to focus on while also giving you time to take care of minor administrative duties such as attendance. Another benefit of the Do Now is that you can provide additional independent practice that helps reduce forgetting. This is a common practice to start a lesson, but I do believe that if you stop here, you may be falling short of gaining your student’s attention before you introduce new learning.

If you start with some form of bellwork, then after discussing your bellwork, you should find a unique way to introduce your learning objectives for the day. You don’t have to have something amazing every day, but finding a unique way to transition from that routine into the new learning you have planned may help capture your students’ attention and allow them to start looking for connections to what they already know.

Teachers should plan to actively engage students in reflection after learning experiences. Though a few research studies have investigated lesson closure (Webster, Connolly, Schempp, 2009), lesson closure activities have been shown to increase students’ retention of concepts resulting in improved student achievement (Bloomquist, T. D., 2010; Cavanaugh, Heward, & Donelson, 1996). Lesson closure can come in various forms, the key is that the teacher engages the student to do the cognitive work of reflecting, connecting, and retrieving information. Ensuring that students do the cognitive work aligns with what we know from how the brain works.

Learning is deeper and more durable when the learner must put forth an effort. Retrieving information from memory strengthens the neural pathways within our brain map (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014). Similarly, restating learning in your own words and connecting it to what you already know allows for greater recall (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014; Harvoth, 2019). The end of a lesson or learning activity is an ideal time to solidify what students have learned and start to build the pathways to remembering. Therefore, ending your lessons with opportunities to summarize what they have learned and low-stakes quizzes to recall key concepts may benefit your students’ overall success.

Conclusion

Lesson planning is a critical part of becoming an effective teacher. By aligning your objectives, assessments, and learning experiences, you are intentionally planning to ensure student success. Being prepared will help keep you and your students on track. However, you should remain open to being flexible in modifying your plans to take advantage of teachable moments and address the needs of your students.

Summarizing Key Understandings

Peer Examples

Suggested Activities

References & Attribution

Attribution: “Lesson Planning Templates”  section was adapted in part from Lesson Planning by the University of Utah, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Attribution: “Lesson Planning Template Heading Options” H5P resource was adapted from Hyflex Course Design and Teaching Strategies (Module 2 Unit 1) by Angela Barclay; Krista Ceccolini; Kathleen Clarke; Nicole Domonchuk; Sidney Shapiro; Jupsimar Singh; Mel Young; Jenni Hayman; Joseph Beer; and Courtney Arseneau, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/hyflexcoursedesignandteachingstrategies/

Bloomquist, T. P. (2010). Effectiveness of closure in lesson design: A quasi-experimental investigation (3446498). [Doctoral dissertation, George Fox University]. Proquest Dissertations Publishing.

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Cavanaugh, R. A., Heward, W. L., & Donelson F. (1996). Effects of response cards during lesson closure on the academic performance of secondary students in an earth science course. Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, 29(3), 403-406. doi:https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1996.29-403

CourseArc (2019). Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction [Website]. Retrieved from https://www.coursearc.com/gagnes-nine-events-of-instruction/

Harvoth, J. C. (2019). 12 insights from brain science to make your message stick. Chatswood, Australia: Exisle Publishing.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to college. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Popham, W. J., & Baker, E. L. (1970). Planning an instructional sequence. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Prince, M. (2004) Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education 93 (3) 223-231. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

Shute, V. J. (2007). Focus on formative feedback. Educational Testing Service. https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-07-11.pdf

Webster, C. A., Connolly, G. & Schempp, P. G. (2009). The finishing touch: anatomy of expert lesson closures. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 14(1), 73-87.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.