Lesson and Unit Planning

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Lesson and Unit Planning

• Innovation and Practical Application
• Presented at
• ISANNE New Faculty Conference
• November 7, 2008

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• Teaching is above all about commanding attention
  and holding it. That means not just generally
  motivating students interests in the subject but
  capturing and keeping their attention for class.
• Michael SandelHarvard political theorist
  recognized by Ken Bain in What the Best College
  Teachers Do

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Agenda Lesson Planning Schematic

• Pre-planning
• What do students know or need to know prior to
  a lesson or unit to ensure success? Student
  prior knowledge is not commensurate with teacher
  knowledge. What concepts might be seen as
  stumbling blocks? EX FOIL
• Engagement
• Can students experience concepts prior to
  learning in order to engage, motivate, or
  experience key concepts?
• Experience
• Lab, Problem, Reading. Language Drill, Film,
  etc.
• Building Skills and Knowledge
• Classroom presentation of concepts lecture,
  note-taking, presentation, demonstrations
• Synthesize/Analyze/Generalize
• Students become responsible for their learning
  through homework, discussion, project work,
  performance, etc.
• Demonstration of Learning
• Test, Quiz, Lab Report, Paper, Presentation,
  Student Teaching, Project, etc
• Transfer
• The best teaching occurs when students can use
  information presented for practical meanscan
  they transfer their learning across disciplines?
  Can they access this information in the future to
  problem solve, explore, or glean greater
  understanding because of the knowledge obtained?
• .

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Begin Here
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Pre-planning (Assessing Prior Knowledge)

• What are some of the best teaching techniques you
  experienced as a student?
• What are some of the worst teaching techniques
  you experienced as a student?
• What is your preferred learning style?

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Our Thoughts

• Many teachers never raise questions they simply
  give students answers.
• -Dan Love
• Many teachers subconsciously teach to their own
  learning style.
• -Jen Berry

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EngagementGetting Students Prepared for the
Experience and Acquisition of Knowledge

• Pair Share
• Best lesson deliverystart to finish.
• What aspects of the lesson planning contributed
  to your success?
• Worst lesson deliverystart to finish.
• What aspects of the lesson planning detracted
  from your success?

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ExperienceWhat do you want your students to do
to experience the content for the day?

• Apply These Ideas to a Lesson for Next Week
• 1) Preplan
• 2) Engage
• 3) Experience

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Building Skills and/or Knowledge

• Pre-planning
• What do students know or need to know prior to
  a lesson or unit to ensure success? Student
  prior knowledge is not commensurate with teacher
  knowledge. What concepts might be seen as
  stumbling blocks? EX) FOIL
• Engagement
• Can students experience concepts prior to
  learning in order to engage, motivate, or
  experience key concepts?
• Experience
• Lab, Problem, Reading. Language Drill, Film,
  etc.
• Building Skills and Knowledge
• Classroom presentation of concepts lecture,
  note-taking, presentation, demonstrations
• Synthesize/Analyze/Generalize
• Students become responsible for their learning
  through homework, discussion, project work,
  performance, etc.
• Demonstration of Learning
• Test, Quiz, Lab Report, Paper, Presentation,
  Student Teaching, Project, etc
• Transfer
• The best teaching occurs when students can use
  information presented for practical meanscan
  they transfer their learning across disciplines?
  Can they access this information in the future to
  problem solve, explore, or glean greater
  understanding because of the knowledge obtained?
• .

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Knowledge and Application(synthesize, analyze,
generalize)Two Schools of Thought

• on one side of the debate, teachers have argued
  that students cannot learn to think, to analyze,
  to synthesize, and to make judgments until they
  know the basic facts of the discipline.
  People in this school of thought have tended to
  emphasize the delivery of information to the
  exclusion of all other teaching activities. They
  seldom expect their students to reason. Ken Bain
  What The Best College Professors Do

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Knowledge and Application(synthesize, analyze,
generalize)Two Schools of Thought

• on the other side of that controversy. They
  believe that students must learn the facts while
  learning to use them to make decisions about what
  they understand or what they should do. To them,
  learning makes little sense unless it has some
  sustained influence on the way the learner
  subsequently thinks, acts, or feels.
• Ken Bain What The Best College Professors Do

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Synthesize/Analyze/Generalize

• Students carry their skill and or knowledge
  acquisition to an assigned task
• Homework, Discussion, Project Work, Performances
• Students link conceptual informational so the
  concept is not learned in isolation.
• In your lesson plan for next week, what is your
  intended outcome for the lesson? How will you
  link the skill and or concept of the day to the
  greater unit?

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Demonstration of LearningAssessment of Student
Learning

• Ideally these statements should
• Mirror the presentation of information.
• Appropriate time for this in every lesson.
• Exceed rote memory
• Measurably assess the effectiveness of the
  lesson.
• Provide choice.
• Ideas Exit Ticket Challenge Problem Thesis of
  the Day Writing Prompt Generate a Hypothesis
  Statement of Concepts Learned.

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Transfer

• The best teachers tend to embed the
  disciplines issues in broader concerns. When
  Dudley Hirschbach teaches chemistry at Harvard,
  he does so with a combination of science, history
  and poetrythe lessons on polymers becomes the
  story of how the development of nylons influenced
  the outcomes of WWII. He even asks his chemistry
  students to write poetry while they struggle to
  comprehend the concepts and ideas that scientists
  have developed.
• Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do
• The best teaching occurs when students can use
  information presented for practical meanscan
  they transfer their learning across disciplines?
  Can they access this information in the future to
  problem solve, explore, or glean greater
  understanding because of the knowledge obtained?
• How is the content personally relevant?

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Words of WisdomGood Teaching By Design

• CHAD---the Charter High School for Architecture
  and Design---founded in 1999 as the countrys
  first public high school with a design-centered
  curriculum. The aim was to use design to teach
  core academic subjects. They take courses in
  architecture, industrial design, color theory,
  and painting. But equally important, the school
  marries design to math, science, English, social
  studies, and other subjects. Theyre learning
  to bring disparate things together to a solution.
  Thats what designers do, says Claire
  Gallagher, a former architect. Design is
  interdisciplinary. Were producing people who
  can think holistically.
• Daniel Pink A Whole New Mind