Lesson Plans: Some Thoughts

By Jim Flowers

This week’s lesson is on the topic of lesson plans. It is important to emphasize that proper planning is essential to good teaching! Sometimes this is a difficult concept to "get across" to students who have seen, probably on many occasions, teachers walk into a classroom with few, if any notes. Some teachers are able to do an adequate job of teaching without any visible lesson plans—but they are the exception, not the rule! Those that are able to teach without developing thorough lesson plans tend to be experienced teachers who have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the field. Since most students in this course will not have the wealth of teaching experience possessed by those exceptions to the rule, you can make up for a lack of experience with good planning.

There are a variety of formats for lesson plans available for your use. Rather than to try to teach several formats, this lesson will provide you with a format for a very thorough, complete lesson plan that deals with each major component. It is acknowledged that experienced teachers may not write down each of the steps (the situation step is one example), but they will address this step mentally if they do a thorough job of planning.

Terminology used in agricultural education will vary somewhat, but in this case, a unit plan refers to a series of related lessons that will require several days of instruction to complete. Some may call this a problem area plan and argue that a unit deals with a broad area of agriculture such as Animal Science. In this discussion, units are referred to as related information on a single topic. The topics should be relatively broad, i.e., feeding livestock, and should encompass a number of smaller subtopics (nutrient classification, nutrient requirements, types of feeds, ration formulation, etc). Planning on a unit basis is considered an efficient way to plan lessons. Yes, it takes longer to do the initial planning, but when completed the teacher may have a week or more of lessons prepared. It helps the teacher see the connections between the various subtopics and avoids the problem of leaving out essential information in an earlier lesson that is needed for subsequent lessons. The teacher plans for the topic as a whole, rather than several daily lessons.

Another advantage of unit planning is that the lessons simply flow from day to day. The teacher is not required to accurately determine how much of the lesson can be taught in a single day—an almost impossible task when one considers the diversity in classes’ abilities, the potential interruptions, the possibility for questions and discussion from students, as well as just underestimating time required for learning activities. The teacher simply teaches as much as possible in a given class period, and on the next day picks up where the last class ended. This makes lesson plans valuable for a number of years—with appropriate updating, of course.

Often, we see formats for daily lesson plans. A daily plan, as the name implies, is a lesson plan that is prepared for only one day of instruction. In agricultural education, we often teach material that requires more than one day of instruction, or the lessons flow in a logical sequence from one day to the next. For that reason, often a daily lesson plan format is not very efficient. Daily plans are an option, but are not recommended for the reasons listed above. It is difficult to plan ahead very far if you use a daily planning format. Teachers often find that they only finish half of what they had intended to complete in a lesson. After doing this a number of times, it is almost impossible to determine just where you are in the overall plan.

Having said that, it is important that a teacher have a daily lesson plan! This lesson plan is an addition to the unit plan described above and may consist of a few notes written on a sheet of paper. This daily plan should list what is to be accomplished in that day’s class. It includes items like:

1. Announcements that need to be made to the class
2. Review notes from the previous lesson (to focus the students on the topic)
3. Statement of what the students will learn today
4. List of learning activities that will be conducted during that class period (notes to yourself)
5. Homework assignments

Notice that this daily plan supplements the unit plan and identifies exactly which part of the unit plan will be taught in today’s lesson. These daily plans can often be developed in a matter of 5 minutes (provided the unit plan is complete) and are often thrown away at the end of the class.

It is possible to use daily plans exclusively instead of unit plans. If this is the case, it is important to incorporate the daily objectives, the interest approaches, all of the content (with directions to yourself on specific examples and learning activities) into each daily plan. Regardless of which format you choose to employ as a teacher, it must be thorough.

Again, the terminology we use in agricultural education is not often the same from person to person. Sometimes you will find "lesson plans" posted on the web that are really just a learning activity. In some cases, they may be only audiovisual aids. For an example, a slide presentation on breeds of horses is not a lesson plan! It is possibly a learning activity, but likely only an instructional aid that is used to enhance a learning activity. A lesson plan should certainly contain learning activities, but a hodgepodge of learning activities does not constitute a well-developed lesson plan.

Developing good lesson plans require time and thought. Teachers spend a great deal of time, especially in earlier years working on lesson plans. However, once developed, they may be used over and over, as long as the teacher updates the content appropriately or modifies the learning activities to meet the needs of the diverse learners that may be in their courses. Despite the fact that they require hard work, lesson plans are essential and must be completed.

There are a number of web sites that provide lesson plans for teachers. A variety of formats will be found in those lesson plans. They are often helpful for teachers in preparing lessons, but in many cases must be modified somewhat in order to be adapted to a local situation. These lesson plans are often excellent sources of ideas for learning activities and for visual aids, handouts, worksheets, etc. that can supplement your instruction. Curriculum centers also provide lesson plans for sale to agricultural education teachers. In many cases, these lesson plans are excellent resources and are recommended to teachers to provide a basis for instruction in their courses. They also may require some modification, but have the potential to greatly reduce the time required in lesson planning.

Final Thoughts:

Well planned lessons have the potential to increase student achievement, increase teacher confidence, decrease student behavior problems, and make the teaching experience more enjoyable and rewarding. Regardless of format selected, teachers must make a commitment to plan adequately for instruction. Certainly, it is possible to over-plan. Writing a "script" for a lesson that details virtually every word the teacher might say is an example of unnecessary planning. But the problem tends to be that teachers under-plan their lessons, not over-plan. We owe our students the best possible instruction that we can provide, and this only occur when we have a plan.