Lesson Development Process
When teachers plan lessons, we suggest they view learning through a student’s lens. Effective teachers align the skill set required of a lesson to a student’s learning level. A teacher’s number one goal is to guide students to exceed their expected potential. To do so, teachers must diagnose the learning levels of students and begin planning lessons at that level. Effective teachers use this insight along with the external expectations for learning, such as curriculum standards, to create a scope and sequence for getting students from a starting point to an expected ending point. With this in mind, we suggest teachers approach planning using a 30 day lesson development process. Why? As teachers, we know if we lose students in a 30 day period, they will likely remain lost and frustrated for an entire semester and even a school year. Also, we can wrap our minds around what students should accomplish in 30 days. We can clearly communicate and describe what learning looks like for students in this period of time. Moving too far beyond 30 days becomes difficult to explain and less specific and focused for students.
Don’t get hung up on the number “30.” Thirty days for some teachers means every month, actually 20 school days. Thirty days for other teachers means 30 actual teaching days. A 30 Day Plan usually falls somewhere between 20 and 30 actual teaching days and fluctuates for each 30 day time period. The total number of school days connected to the 30 Day Plan will depend on the overall learning targets and the scaffolds of those targets into small segments of instruction.
How will you begin thinking about your next 30 day lesson planning cycle?
Asti Kelley, TeacherReady®