A lesson plan is a roadmap for an instructor about what and how the pupil should learn. This roadmap also helps an instructor design the teaching methodologies and engagement to be better effective during live sessions.

If you are a teacher it is better to identify and target the learning objectives of the class beforehand. With the set objectives, the most suitable learning activities along with the right strategies for lesson planning can be implemented. A good lesson plan is capable of addressing and bringing together three key components and they are:

• Strategies to check the understanding of students
• Learning/teaching activities
• Objectives for student learning

When we specify strong objectives for student learning, we can easily identify the types of learning and teaching activities to use in the class.

Key Components of Lesson Planning:

If we wish to design a detailed lesson plan, we should start by looking at the three components of lesson planning a bit more closely.

1. The understanding of students:

This is a simple reflection component that helps us to gauge the effectiveness of our lesson plans. By simply designing simple yet direct questions to get feedback directly from the students and comparing them with the objectives and goals of our lesson planning, we can begin to identify the effective and ineffective parts of our lesson plans. Making changes accordingly to improve the whole engagement for the next time is the next step.

2. Learning/teaching activities:

Based on our learning objectives, we can decide on effective activities.

As an educator, we should know that all learners are not at the same level. Different students have different learning capabilities, so naturally, our teaching practices and activities should be designed considering a wide spectrum of learning and understanding measurements. . Personal attention to those who need extra care and attention to keep up with the activities is always a recommended practice. It is our responsibility and ethics, as educators, to make things simple and effective for the students. Understanding the objectives of a lesson plan is the next step.

3. Objectives for student learning:

Objectives are the key component of lesson planning. Only when the purpose of the lesson is goal based and engaging, can we hope to get the attention of the students and retain it.

Objectives are set based on the knowledge and familiarity with the student(s), quite often they are formed based on the goals and requirements of the addressed section of students.

Now that you have the key components of a lesson plan, we can look at the 5 steps in lesson planning for teachers before developing one.

5-Steps in Lesson Planning for teachers

Introduction:

The 5-Step Lesson Plan is a popular model for effective lesson planning. One can easily adapt this model, particularly for content areas and grade levels in your teaching.

The advantage of this model is that it helps students learn fresh materials faster. They will also be able to understand how each lesson matches their general knowledge. It will be helpful for teachers like you as it helps you keep tabs on student comprehension more effectively.

How to prepare a Lesson Plan?

Include the interest of students in your lessons:

People can be taught many things, but they will only retain things that they like. The same is with students as well, especially when it comes to getting them to pay attention and keeping them engaged.

Engaging can be better approached by discovering their interests and working them into designing your lesson planning. Resonance is built by adopting the culture of the students, their world, their references, their environment, their influences, etc. Reflection of similar and familiar concepts builds curiosity, leading to engagement and deeper influence.

Ensure activities and assignments are purposeful:

In the course of designing a lesson plan, remember the importance of effective activities and engagement exercises. It is important to make the activities purposeful and meaningful. Meaningful activities and assignments should help you meet the learning objectives one way or the other.

Make lessons relevant:

Keeping relevance is an active part of lesson planning. Irrespective of the syllabus, the context if it is functional in their environments should be made clear and applied to the materials. Real-world applications and what it means to their environments should be considered carefully and contextualized meticulously to create relevance to their level of resonance.

Share lessons with your fellow teachers:

One of the best strategies to ensure the effectiveness of your lesson planning is to share your plans with colleagues and fellow educators and share feedback with each other. The feedback can be used to make the plans more effective depending on the needs and objectives.

Refine lessons based on feedback:

Like any other professional, teachers should also aim for continuous improvement. They can talk to students to get their feedback on which lessons were interesting for them and which were not. This should be used to refine the lesson plans and understand the needs on a deeper level and adopt them progressively.

Importance of effective Lesson Planning:

An effective and well-founded classroom needs primarily a well-designed lesson planning strategy.

Experts feel that developing lesson plans a week in advance would be a good idea. It is also recommended that teachers should leave the classroom before weekends or week offs with proper planning for the upcoming week. When they do this, they can walk into the classroom every Monday feeling ready for the class completely.

Following the 5 step lesson plan for teachers will help teachers plan things with ease and have a greater impact.