Lesson Plans and Reflection
5:58 pm on the 8th of November, 2006Part of the school placement system on my course is that we produce a number of full lesson plans for for lessons we have taken.
I don’t feel submitting these plans has much benefit on it’s own - writing up lessons plans like these ones is bit of a false thing, what is being tested is not the ability to come up with a good idea for a lesson and carry it out well but rather analyse every detail about the pupils and their needs. You would never find a practising teacher spending their time filling out a 1000 word plan under sections headed ‘Previous Knowledge of Pupils’ or ‘Plans for Differentiation’ for each and every lesson they take. It’s not that they aren’t bothering, it’s just that it isn’t worthwhile writing it up and adapting it after each time you see a class.
I’ll submit all the lesson plans in the form they are asked for but I think far more important is a piece of reflection written after having taken the lesson looking at how it went and how I could improve. A piece like this isn’t asked for but I think it is far more beneficial than most of the other content so I’m going to add it in at the end of each plan anyway.
[tags]lesson plans, teaching, reflection[/tags]
Tags: lesson-plans, reflection, teaching
November 8th, 2006 at 10:51 pm on the 8th of November, 2006
I’m convinced that the blogging medium could replace the traditional idea of lesson planning at university - and even in the workplace. Why don’t you play around with the idea. What matters is that the teacher is thinking about what they’ve done, what they are doing and what they are going to do. We need to get past pointless exercises.
November 9th, 2006 at 1:01 pm on the 9th of November, 2006
Pointless exercises exist througout education. I qualified as an accountant over 5 years ago, and thought it ridiculous then that, in my finals, I was amnually calculating discounted values etc and various other multitudes of data. Why? Because in real life, I plug in what I need to excel, set up formula’s links etc, dopy, drag, drop and get the whole thing done in a fraction of the time. Even today, 5 years on, exams are paper based, not computer based, which hardly mirrors real life.
November 29th, 2006 at 4:21 pm on the 29th of November, 2006
So, lesson plans aren’t “worthwhile” or have “much benefit” in your opinion.
Well they are part of a process that forces student teachers to consider pupils learning before they consider there teaching. So putting pupils learning needs at the centre of a lesson, rather than the interesting/fun task or activity you’ve decided to fill there life with is an important concept.
What gets me about your posting is that you’re subject area always talks about PRISME. Which requires you to document you analysis/design/implementation and evaluation. So it’s okay for a pupil to write-up their work for a coffee table but not a student teacher for his lessons! Sound like double standards.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:20 pm on the 29th of November, 2006
Kenneth, perhaps you should read my post again.
Let’s look at the ‘worthwhile’ comment: I said it isn’t worthwhile a teacher writing up and adapting sections about pupils’ needs each time they see a particular class, which is what we are being asked to do. I don’t have a problem with the practise of putting the child at the centre of the learning, my problem lies with having extensively write up the same things each time you teach a class - the pupils needs don’t change (much) from lesson to lesson.
Now the ‘much benefit’ part. It doesn’t mean I think there is no benefit, and in any case I was talking about the lesson plan in relation to the lesson. I was trying to put forward the case that spending a long time considering pupils’ needs is not on it’s own a beneficial task - a student teacher could spend hours working out exactly how to teach the best lesson for each pupil only to find that they have got it all wrong, yet the lesson plan which is submitted would still have all the ‘wrong’ things in it, I was suggesting that a more beneficial task would be to spend time after the lesson considering if the plan had worked.
PRISME* is a bit outdated actually, if you want to have a chat about how I go about teaching design then I’m more than willing to. The problem with PRISME is that is enforces a surface approach to design, giving the idea that something that is very complex with no right answers can be solved with 6 magic headings that only ask for a few simple short answers. Still it’s good to know that you keep up with other subject areas before you step in to criticise them.
I struggle to see what double standards you are referring to, I say in my post that I am writing up my lessons and that I am doing extra work to ensure that I am doing the best job I can. I just don’t understand that point.
What really ‘gets’ me about your comment is that you haven’t taken the time to read what I have written, you have breezed in here and taken whatever meaning you fancied from my words then added your own cynical view in a less than pleasant manner.
*PRISME stands for Problem, Research, Investigation, Solution, Manufacture, Evaluation.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:53 pm on the 29th of November, 2006
I think a Wiki would be better suited to this
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