Preparing an effective teaching plan for impactful learning requires deep understanding of the teaching objectives and process. I have a family of teachers, my grandfather, my sisters, my sister-in-law, and my wife all are teachers. I always hear from them that they are preparing their lesson/ teaching plan. Or they are busy checking the student notebooks, assignments, or papers.

And as a child, I used to ask my grandfather “Why you are preparing for tomorrow’s class? You teach the same lesson every year.” He would smile at me and would say “The students will be attending the class for the first time. Do you want this old man to leave a bad impression on them?” and we would laugh together.

As I grew and started my career as a computer teacher. I was able to understand the importance of writing an effective Lesson plan. I was able to understand a well-prepared teaching plan could impact the learning of the students. Now I think about the words of my grandfather and appreciate them. The lesson may be same for me. But it is new for the students and I should prepare my teaching plan to make their learning experience interesting and infuse confidence in them. Lesson plan has to be different for different set of students.

Teaching and Preparing teaching plan

A Lesson Plan is an important element of teaching. Teachers irrespective of the subject and experience need to prepare a teaching plan to make learning effective for the students. You start your teaching plan by clearly stating the objective of the lesson.

Once the lecture is delivered you also need to assess if the students were able to understand the concepts shared in the lecture in line with the set objective.

During my initial days of teaching computers, we used to focus our sessions keeping in mind the practical assignment that the students were required to complete in their lab session. We first developed the practical assignment and developed our lesson plan to cover the topics that students will need to complete their practical assignment. And proved to be quite effective in motivating the students and gradually building their skills.

But this system had its own risk in terms of the teachers leaving out the important theoretical aspects of the lesson which may not find any application but are important from a conceptual point of view. The student may never be able to learn important concepts which were neither covered in the class, nor he has used to build his skills. 

The point of argument here is whether we should focus only on the lesson objective and undermine the objective of teaching. I believe the objective of teaching is to introduce the subject, raise questions in the mind of the students and motivate them to discover answers. If you are able to raise the curiosity level of the students, you have done a decent job.

Lesson Plan Cycle-Plan, Deliver, Check, Correct

Administrative activities and the pressure of completing the syllabus is a common problems. In your teaching career, you might have faced this dilemma. This leaves very little time to build effective workbooks and assignments and to evaluate them. You should budget time for preparing and evaluating workbooks, assignments, and group activities. This will enable you to identify the gaps in learning and the objectives of the lesson plans.

Preparing a lesson plan is a continuous process.  You prepare your lesson plan, deliver the lesson, and evaluate it to check if it met the set objective. Any gaps which emerge you can incorporate in your next lesson and the process goes on. As explained by Anthony Haynes in his book “The Complete Guide to Lesson Planning and Preparation”. He elaborates it as a Three Step spiral. The lessons learned in the previous class becomes the starting point for the next class.

In addition to the three steps, I propose to add another step correctly. This is with respect to your teaching style. When you check you will also be able to identify the reasons for the learning gaps. You make necessary corrections in your delivery style as per the reasons identified. You can to that by adding more examples, some workbooks, assignments, or group exercises while delivering the lecture.

Summary

In another post, I shared the key elements of a teaching plan which are important in building a teaching plan. Your teaching plan has to have a lasting impression on the student’s learning and overall development. They are ideally a roadmap for the teachers to set the objective of lessons and engage students. They also act as guides for the substitute teachers and maintain continuity. The ideas shared in this post are more generic in nature and you can apply them to any subject.