Introduction

Planning is key to effective instruction. A careful process of planning contributes to teacher comfort with content and lesson implementation, organization of material, and most importantly the purpose and direction of the instruction.

A normal process of planning begins with an overview of the entire academic year to prepare a year-long plan of units of instruction. Each unit, in turn, consists of several lessons that work together to develop a unit goal. The lessons are guided by instructional objectives that focus the lessons and the choice of assessments and instructional tasks. Long range planning, unit planning, and lesson planning are the various levels of the instructional planning process that work together to shape meaningful instruction.

In order to best understand each individual element of the architecture for planning, this resource breaks down the various components in reverse beginning with an overview of the processes of writing objectives, preparing lesson plans, developing units, and finally considering long range goals and yearlong plans. It is expected that once the teacher has a working knowledge of each component and its relationship to all others, the actual process of instructional planning with a consideration of the big picture and movement towards individual lessons can be enacted.

Lesson plans, and the instruction that follows from them, are central to student learning and to managing a classroom. When lesson planning, a backwards design (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998) is recommended. This means starting with the end in mind. Such a design begins with determining the lesson objective, followed by choosing appropriate assessments, and finally deciding upon the appropriate instructional activities that will help the learner reach the objective. The objective describes the lesson’s purpose and drives the lesson; the assessment provides the means to demonstrate the objective’s attainment. Instructional activities outline the strategies a teacher uses to facilitate student learning in order to be able to demonstrate achievement of the objective. The diagram above shows (click here for a larger image of the diagram) how backwards design begins with long range planning and ends with lesson planning.

Here is a short video on backwards design that visually shows how design begins with determining the objective first.

There are three simple questions to ask when planning:

1. What is it that I want students to know or be able to do by the end of the lesson? Answering this question determines the lesson objective.
2. How will I know if students have achieved the objective? Answering this question considers the lesson assessment.
3. What instructional strategies and learning tasks can help students achieve the objective? Answering this question shapes the lesson.

This section is divided into three parts. Chapter 2 will consider the process of writing objectives and aligning assessments, and it will introduce knowledge types that are important to consider when planning instruction. Chapter 3 will consider the structure of the lesson plan and present four basic strategies for engaging students that when mastered can easily and effectively be varied in instructional delivery. Chapter 4 will present sample lessons at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.