Planning Instruction

Lesson plans are the infrastructure for learning, and designing them is a methodical and artistic process. It is important for me to walk into a classroom with an organized and cohesive lesson plan in hand. Whether I precisely follow it is questionable, but it at least is the initial scaffold for which knowledge emanates.

Prior to writing lesson plans, I set content and language objectives for activities. I aim to make them clear, observable and measurable. For example, I avoid using the verb understand in my objectives as the word does not measure what students will be able to do by the end of a lesson. Instead, I use Bloom’s taxonomy of measurable verbs as a guide for writing objectives which require students to demonstrate critical thinking.

My lessons are divided into pre-, during- and post-activities that work together as cohesive lessons. I design pre-activities that motivate students for the during- and post- activities. These usually include group or class discussion questions, a short movie clip and/or a discussion on a topic and how it connects to students’ lives. For example, in a lesson on fortune telling, my students discussed in groups (1) different ways to tell fortunes, and (2) past experiences they have had or stories they have heard about visiting a fortune teller. I design interactive and out-of-seat during-activities that specifically target language and content objectives. These usually comprise the bulk of my lessons. Finally, I use “exit-tickets” or a short class discussion as a post-activity to assess which objectives, or learning outcomes, students mastered.

To maximize learning, I provide students with authentic texts and incorporate individual and group work. For example, in my California State and National Parks lesson I presented a collection of park brochures, such as Julia Pfeiffer Burns, Castle Rock, Death Valley, and Joshua Tree. I consciously chose these State and National Parks to make students aware of the natural resources close to their home. I believe student engagement outside the classroom increases motivation, and provides opportunities for them to broaden their lexicon in a less controlled, but more realistic, environment.

Each student brings a different learning style to the classroom. To cater to introvert and extrovert personalities, I manage activities with a mix of individual, pair, group and classroom work. Using such think, pair, share activities gives students time to think critically on their own before negotiating meaning with partners or as a class. Furthermore, pair and group work provide students with opportunities to communicate free from the pressure of speaking in front of the class. In a lesson I taught on staying healthy, I incorporated several activities requiring students to work in pairs before opening the class up for discussion. For example, as a pre-activity, students discussed the meaning of “staying healthy” in pairs before defining it as a class. In a post-activity, students discussed the pros and cons of different food pyramid representations. After they identified their pyramid’s strengths and weaknesses, they presented them to the class, discussing how closely their own diets followed the depicted guidelines.

Not allocating enough time for classroom activities was one of my weaknesses while executing my practicum teaching hours at the Pacific Grove Adult School. Throughout the progression of my practicum teaching, I used the feedback from my professor to plan better quality instruction. I designed fewer, but more in-depth and scaffolded, activities for students to execute well. For example, in my lesson on Conserving Water I consciously cut the lesson’s activities by half, and modeled them by pre-teaching vocabulary. This gave students an opportunity to ask questions and more deeply explore the lesson’s topic.