If Kids Planned the Lesson

If you were to plug “Great Lesson Plans,” into just about any search engine, all sorts of useful information for teachers immediately pops up. Instead of going online, though, how about thinking about a great lesson from a student’s viewpoint? One good way to find out what students really want is to simply ask them how they would like to learn the day’s material. Or, administer a quick survey (www.surveymonkey.com). Solicit advice via exit tickets or suggestions dropped into a suggestion box. All of these are good ways to find out what your students would like to do in class. 

               At this point in the school year, though, we probably know our students well enough to be able to predict what they would do if they were given the plan book for a day. Here are some of the essentials that many students would probably like to see included in a great lesson plan.

1. An opening exercise that allows them to chatter away while making the transition to the day’s lesson. The exercise should also be interesting while reminding them of what they already know. Something like a Round Robin exercise, for example.
2. Silly videos related to the topic are always a plus. Even better are student-made videos.
3. Games of just about any sort—low or high tech. Board games are always good no matter what. Student made board games are the best.  
4. Any game that requires players to roll dice is immediately a huge (and noisy) success.
5. The perfect student lesson plan will certainly include sharing, collaboration, or teamwork in every possible permutation.
6. Students like questions that they can answer. This sets the stage for activities where they quiz each other. They would also choose to hold competitions where they can answer as a team and not be put on the spot individually.
7. Beating the clock is always fun. So is setting a personal best goal and working towards it. Being able to work for a good short-term purpose is always a popular activity.
8. One unusual student preference is being able to shift partners during an activity or switching teams in the course of a lesson. Movement instead of remaining seated all class keeps everyone alert.
9. Music. Music. Music. Background music. Headphones. Music is always good.
10. A countdown to something is always fun. Not a frantic, frenzied race, but a countdown that focuses an activity—like an online countdown clock to an activity.
11. Students like learning something interesting or peculiar so that they have a good answer to, “What did you learn in school today?” They also like learning interesting and peculiar information just because it’s fun to think about. Weird facts are always fun to know.
12. Students enjoy an opportunity to write on something besides notebook paper. The more outrageous the surface the better.
13. If students were to design a lesson, there would be lots of gaudy coloring. Students would be writing on the board more, too.
14. If there is a lesson with a reading component, students would design it in such a way that classmates read it together—and not in that embarrassing popcorn style either. With friends or friendly teammates to share the reading load.
15. There would also be a component where students do something to help someone else. Whether it be playing an altruistic game such as Free Rice (www.freerice.com), or just helping out classmates, students like to feel that their contributions to the world matter.
16. Having several choices of meaningful and interesting activities to do in a reasonable amount of time would also be part of a kid-designed lesson plan. Having a free choice among the choices is even more interesting for some students.
17. Manipulatives, three-D graphic organizers, paper airplanes, and squishy toys are almost mandatory in student-designed lessons. Rubber bands and paper clips would also find a way to be included as well.
18. Finally, in the ideal lesson designed by students, the homework would be something that fits in with their out-of-school lives and interests and can be done simply—without fuss—and in just the right amount of time.  

Prior Knowledge and Great Online Lesson Plan Sites

One of the best things about writing about education while still being an active classroom teacher is that the research I do for the book often translates into something practical that I can use in my own teaching practice. In the two excerpts from the manuscript that I am working on right now, the third edition of the First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide, I found information that I can use right away. In the first excerpt, "Assess Your Students' Prior Knowledge," I revisited some successful strategies that I used to use but had forgotten.

I hope that some of them may work in combindation with lots of other techniques, to help you figure out what your students already know about what you want to teach so that they can buy in right away and begin learning without delay. In the second excerpt, I wanted to offer the new teachers who are the audience for this book some really good Web sites where they can find lesson plan ideas. Much to my happy surprise, I found several sites that I can use myself and I have been teaching for over thirty-five years. I hope both excerpts can spark your teaching as they have done mine (and as I hope they will the new teachers who will read this book next summer!)

 

ASSESS YOUR STUDENTS’ PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

“Your students’ prior knowledge is a gift that they bring to class each day. Before you can make final decisions about what you are going to teach, you first need to determine what your students already know.

            Determining your students’ prior knowledge is crucial because it determines the approach you will take with a unit of study. For example, if most of your students understand a concept, then you may wish to only review it briefly as a springboard to studying the next concept. On the other hand, if most of your students are unfamiliar with information you assumed they would already know, your approach will need to be more comprehensive. Because building on background knowledge is such an important component of successful instruction, determining that background or prior knowledge is essential.

            You can use what you learn about your students’ prior knowledge in many different ways. For instance, if you discover that one student understands a concept and can explain it to the rest of the class, that student’s success will motivate the others to succeed.

            To assess your students’ previous learning, there are many techniques you can use. Try adapting some of these to assess what your students already know about a topic.

•        Ask students to write out a quick list of three facts they already know or think they know about a topic. After they have passed their responses to you, read some of them aloud (without revealing the author) and ask the entire class to judge their veracity.

•        Ask students to write a brief description of what they have already been taught about the topic you are about to study. You could even ask them to tell you when and how they learned the information.

•        Create a brief sampling of some of the questions you plan to include on a quiz or test later in the unit. Ask students to predict the correct answers.

•        Divide your students into small groups and ask them to share everything they know about the topic under study. Set a time limit.  After the time limit is up, have a representative from each group share the group’s knowledge with the rest of the class.

•        List the main points of the unit you are about to teach, and ask students to write what they already know about each one. Share their answers with the entire group.

•        List the key terms that students will study. Have students write what they believe each term means based on what they already know about the topic. They should share their answers with the entire group.

•        Ask students work to in pairs, and hand each pair a transparency or a sheet of poster paper. Have each pair brainstorm, listing everything they know about the topic. Share the lists with the class, or display them.

•        Offer a puzzling scenario, and ask students to solve it, using what they already know about the topic. Have students keep their responses in order to verify their knowledge as they progress in their study.

•        Show students a photograph, cartoon, diagram, quotation, or brief article related to the topic you are about to study. Ask them to share their reactions.

•        Ask your students to create a Know/Want to Know/Learned (KWL) chart. The first two sections of the chart will give you a good summary of their previous learning.

 

FREE ONLINE RESOURCES FOR LESSON PLANS

 

Although there are dozens of online sites devoted to lesson plans, the sites in the list below offer a comprehensive assortment of free lesson plans and lesson plan resources for K-12 educators. These sites are not limited in the topics that they cover, but allow teachers to access lesson plans that cover a wide variety of content areas. At some sites, teachers may need to register to be able to fully use all of the resources at the site, but at the time of publication, all of these sites were free resources for educators.

 

A to Z Teacher Stuff (http://www.atozteacherstuff.com)

A to Z Teacher Stuff is a teacher-created site designed to help teachers find lesson plans, thematic units, teacher tips, discussion forums, printable worksheets as well as many more online resources.

 

Discovery Education (http://www.discoveryeducation.com)

Discovery Education offers an enormous wealth of resources for teachers—digital media, hundreds of easily adaptable lesson plans, worksheets, clip art, and much more.

 

Explore (http://explore.org)

Sponsored by the Annenberg foundation, Explore’s library consists of hundreds of brief, original films and more than30,000 photographs from around the world on a  wide range of topics such as animal rights, health, poverty , the environment, education, and spirituality.

 

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (http://free.ed.gov)

At Free, teachers can access more than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources submitted from dozens of federal agencies. While these are not actual lesson plans in themselves, these resources  can be invaluable tools in designing instruction.

 

ForLessonPlans (http://www.forlessonplans.com)

ForLessonPlans is an online directory of free lesson plans for K-12 teachers. Created by teachers, this site offers lesson plans that cover many different subjects as well as links to other resources.

 

HotChalk (http://lessonplanspage.com)

At HotChalk’s lesson plans page, teachers can access over 3,500 lesson plan. The extensive selection of lesson plans at this helpful resource site were first developed by students and faculty at the University of Missouri in 1996 and later expanded to Website users.

 

The Independent Television Service (http://www.itvs.org)

The Independent Television Service (ITVS) presents award-winning documentaries and dramas as well as  innovative new media projects on the Web. Teachers can find interactive games and lessons plans that accompany the media presentations.

 

Lesson Planet (http://www.lessonplanet.com)

Founded in 1999, Lesson Planet enables teachers to search more than 400,000 teacher-reviewed lesson plans, worksheets, and other resources in an online, professional community. A free trial is available.

 

LessonPlans.com (http://www.lessonplans.com)

Maintained by the Educators Network, LessonPlans.com offers thousands of teacher-created lessons plans in an easy-to-search format organized by topic as well as by grade level.

 

National Education Association (http://www.nea.org)

The National Education Association Website offers thousands of lesson plans in an easily searchable format. Teachers can also find a variety of lesson planning resources as well as practical tips for classroom use.

 

Scholastic (http://www.scholastic.com)

Scholastic offers thousands of free lesson plans, unit plans, discussion guides, and extension activities for all grade levels and content areas.

 

Share My Lesson (http://www.sharemylesson.com)

 Share My Lesson is maintained by the American Federation of Teachers and TES Connect. Developed by teachers for teachers, this free platform provides over 250,000 teaching resources and provides an online collaborative community. Share My Lesson also has a significant resource bank for Common Core State Standards.

 

Teachers Network (http://teachersnetwork.org)

Teachers Network, a New York City nonprofit organization for educators, offers thousands of lesson plans and lesson plan resources covering a wide assortment of topics in a variety of formats for teachers at all grade levels.

 

Teaching Channel (https://www.teachingchannel.org)

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Teaching Channel is a video showcase of innovative and effective teaching practices schools. Instead of traditional lesson plans, teachers can watch brief videos of effective teaching ideas that they may want to implement in their own classrooms.

 

Thinkfinity (http://www.thinkfinity.org)

Thinkfinity is the Verizon Foundation’s online professional learning community, providing free access to over 50,000 educators, thousands of  digital resources aligned to state standards and the common core, as well as blogs and discussion groups."