We all know that writing is an important task for students. It helps their communication skills, but beyond that it also helps them to focus and develop their ideas. It's the same for teachers! Writing a lesson plan can help us to really think about our goals for the day. If we reflect on those objectives it's more likely that we're planning meaningful experiences for our students instead of just filling up the day with activities.
Planning lessons can also help us to stay organized. In the middle of a dynamic classroom, it might be easy to lose sight of our goal for the day. With a lesson plan we have a road map that can help us to get back on the right track. It can also serve as a quick last minute checklist to make sure we have all of our supplies- that way we won't be standing in front of 20 seven-year-olds who are ready to see a volcano explode and realize we forgot the vinegar at home...
There are a lot of important parts of an elementary science lesson plan, but two that stand out to me are safety considerations and assessment tools.
First, safety considerations. It's easy to take some basic safety rules for granted as adults, but for kids these ideas may not be so obvious. In the last few weeks I've seen students try to taste their glue sticks on the sly and one particularly enterprising boy try to add some holes to his shirt with a pair of scissors- and this was during a reading lesson! In science, we do a lot of hands-on work with different materials, chemicals, and even living organisms. It's really important that we think about our lessons from a safety point of view and keep reviewing safety procedures with our students.
The second piece is assessment. Maybe I planned the best science lesson in the world, but how will I know if my students really learned from it unless I plan some good assessment too? There are a lot of ways to assess kids (observing them, using a checklist, having a discussion, asking them to do a little writing, etc.). For each of our major objectives, we need to make sure we have a way to see how our students are doing. Using assessment also helps us to revamp our lessons when we need to and to see what we need to go over again tomorrow in a different way. Assessment should inform our teaching decisions.
So make a plan!
I'm really glad you brought up the issue of safety, and your personal experience in the classroom is a great example. I think as teachers, that it is far to easy to always be concentrating on the students and how well we are serving them. We are worried that what we teach will not be effective, or that what we teach is the right thing to teach or the wrong thing to teach. However, with all these overwhelming thoughts on the curriculum and the students' mental capabilities, I think it becomes very easy to forget that little Billy sitting in the corner of the classroom is about to poke his eye out with a pair scissors. For me at least, I believe that thinking on the most fundamental levels of instruction will prove to be the most difficult to keep constant.
ReplyDeleteHi Lindsay!
ReplyDeleteI was watching the Amazing Race as I was typing my blog and I thought it was fate when that quote came up so I had to add it. LOL!
I completely agree with what you said about making the lesson meaningful for the students. If we don't strive for this goal, we're not only wasting our time, but our student's time as well. Ensuring we're organized and prepared with all the right materials is a huge aspect too. Like Paige said, you don't want to start a unit on butterflies and realize you forgot the caterpillars! And, as always, safety is a huge concern. All of these seemingly little, irrelevant things are actually the backbone of our lessons, so it's important to keep them at the forefront so we don't forget!
Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteIt is so true, writing things down allows people to think about the topic at hand. For teachers it allows them to organize their thoughts and to make sure the instruction they provide is meaningful. (At least in my case it does, others may need to talk it out/do something different.) Haha I love the vinegar reference. The students would be highly disappointed and could through off the entire rest of the day. Hahaha they are on to glue sticks now? I remember when I was in first grade a bunch of my friends loved to eat the paste that we had. By the end of elementary school several kids moved on to eating chap stick. For the boy with the scissors, I am glad it was only a shirt! We had one girl in my daycare attempt to cut another students nostril a few years ago, and their are always kids trying to keep up on the latest hairstyles =).
As you mentioned, assessment is one of the most important parts of a lesson/teaching and although there are several different assessment tools to use, I am the most scared about assessing my future students. I am afraid that I will be mislead into believing that a student understands a concept when in fact they really don't. Or falsely thinking that the child does not understand what I taught because they understood it and described it in a way that was different from what I had considered.