Phone Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
1-800-933-ASCD (2723)
Address 1703 North Beauregard St. Alexandria, VA 22311-1714
Complete Customer Service Details
October 2016 | Volume 74 | Number 2
Marge Scherer
Part of a theme issue on "Powerful Lesson Planning"
Table of Contents
Susan M. Brookhart
"Memorizing facts is boring. Drill-and-practice is boring. But thinking, for most students most of the time, is actually fun," writes Susan M. Brookhart. The author recommends that teachers build interest and engagement into every lesson plan by creating opportunities for deep thinking. She describes three strategies to accomplish this. First, plan open questions that don't have one correct answer. For example, teachers might describe two fictional students' answers and ask students which one they agree with, and why. Second, give students tasks that require more than merely looking up and reproducing information. For example, instead of having students make a poster showing the characteristics of a planet, ask them to pretend they are astronauts; research the eight planets and decide which one they'd like to settle; and make a poster describing the planet, its challenges, some of the equipment they'd need to settle it. Third, give students opportunities to self-assess their learning–for example, by employing rubrics or even helping to create their own rubrics. These three strategies are just a few of the many teachers can use, writes Brookhart, to encourage students to engage in higher-order thinking.
Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett
In this article, authors Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett argue that student engagement is more than a decorative icing on a cake; it's the cake itself. They cite research that an engaged student is more likely to invest in and understand the content being taught. With this in mind, the authors detail the following four principles that teachers can use to plan lessons for greater student engagement: build teacher-student and student-student relationships, create interest through concepts and essential questions, gauge and respond to student progress frequently, and offer choice. Doubet and Hockett provide practical suggestions to help educators implement each of these principles.
Bradley A. Ermeling and Genevieve Graff-Ermeling
More than a decade ago, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies observed that teachers in the United States focused more on "high-interest activities" (games, dramatic presentations, humor, and so on) than on the development of challenging concepts. Since then, the authors have worked with many teaching teams to shift the emphasis of lesson planning from engaging students through activities to leading them to master content goals. In this article, they argue that every lesson plan needs a storyline–an overall sequence of progression of lesson elements that helps students advance toward specific learning goals. Examples from language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies illustrate how lessons can go from activity-based to coherent.
Kim Greene
The last several years has seen an increasingly popular trend of teachers buying and selling their lesson plans and other self-created classroom materials in online marketplaces. The leader in this space is a website called Teachers Pay Teachers, which boasts 3.8 million active users. In this article, the author examines why these sites became popular and some of their key strengths, including opportunities for teachers to share classroom-tested resources, to connect with global colleagues, to make supplemental income, and to promote the teacherprenuial spirit. The article also discusses some of the marketplaces' drawbacks, namely legal and ethical concerns, the possibility of an incoherent curriculum made up of pieced together lessons, and the lack of quality control. Still, teachers continue to use these websites, so the author provides recommendations for improving the practice of buying and selling lesson plans. The article also contains a sidebar by Andrew P. Marcinek with guidance about how to use free Open Education Resources.
Andrew P. Marcinek
Janine T. Remillard
The so-called "good-teacher doctrine" has long perpetuated the idea that good teachers don't use pre-packaged curriculum materials. Rather, they create their own lessons intended for the students sitting in front of them. In this article, Janine T. Remillard challenges this assumption and contends that good teachers can–and should–partner with curriculum materials. "The teacher-curriculum partnerships is at its best when the distinct capabilities of each member are recognized and leveraged in support of student learning," she writes. Remillard explains the curriculum development process and how these carefully designed lessons contain pathways for learning. But she also identifies the strengths that teachers bring to the partnership, namely their ability to make modifications to serve their specific students. Remillard offers four strategies for teachers who want to make the most of curriculum materials, including how to look for big ideas, pay attention to learning pathways, anticipate student responses, and collaborate with colleagues.
The so-called "good-teacher doctrine" has long perpetuated the idea that good teachers don't use pre-packaged curriculum materials. Rather, they create their own lessons intended for the students sitting in front of them. In this article, Janine T. Remillard challenges this assumption and contends that good teachers can–and should–partner with curriculum materials.
"The teacher-curriculum partnerships is at its best when the distinct capabilities of each member are recognized and leveraged in support of student learning," she writes. Remillard explains the curriculum development process and how these carefully designed lessons contain pathways for learning. But she also identifies the strengths that teachers bring to the partnership, namely their ability to make modifications to serve their specific students. Remillard offers four strategies for teachers who want to make the most of curriculum materials, including how to look for big ideas, pay attention to learning pathways, anticipate student responses, and collaborate with colleagues.
Marilyn Burns
Math education consultant Marilyn Burns finds that teachers ask her the same three questions so often she's named them The Big Three: What can I do with students who finish their math work more quickly?, How can I free up time to work with kids who need extra help?, and How can I differentiate math learning experiences? Burns, who works closely with a 4th grade class in California, describes math menus, a strategy she uses to help this class's teacher address the Big Three. A math menu is a list of options for math activities—done individually or in pairs–posted on chart paper. Many activities are differentiated, and students choose the order in which they want to do the activities and which, if any, they want to repeat. Burns describes a lesson on addition and subtraction skills presented in this class and a differentiated math menu option she and the teacher created to extend students' learning of the concepts and skills in the lesson.
Nancy Boyles
Today's state literacy standards and assessments demand deeper levels of knowledge from students. But many teachers ask, "What does depth of knowledge look like on these new, more rigorous assessments? How do we prepare students for this kind of thinking?" In this article, Nancy Boyles uses a sampling of questions from the PARCC and SBAC assessments to illustrate what students need to be able to do at four depth of knowledge levels–recall and reproduction, skills and concepts, strategic thinking and reasoning, and extended thinking. What does rigorous teaching and learning look like at each level? Boyles asserts that rigor should not be reserved for deeper depth of knowledge levels, but is also essential at the levels of recall, reproduction, and skills. For example, when students perform the seemingly low-level task of finding factual evidence in a text, they can practice rigor by holding themselves accountable for spot-on accuracy and choosing the very best evidence. And students need to master basic skills because they'll need to access these skills when they move to deeper levels of knowledge.
Suzy Pepper Rollins
Most students have gaps in their background knowledge and basic skills–gaps that can stand in the way of learning new concepts. For example, a student may be excited about studying probability–until he realizes that today's lesson on probability will require him to use fractions. As his brain searches frantically for his dim recollection of the rules for multiplying and dividing fractions, he feels defeated before he even begins. To help every student move forward and experience success, Suzy Pepper Rollins recommends that teachers anticipate possible gaps in knowledge and build scaffolds into each lesson to address these gaps. She describes a variety of tools to provide such support. For example, teachers can provide bookmarks that students can inconspicuously tuck into their textbooks and refer to as needed to remind them of grammar rules, verb conjugations, multiplication tables, integer rules, formulas, parts of a cell, vocabulary words, and so on. Or teachers can annotate some students' texts with helpful hints, such as word definitions or stars to indicate important paragraphs. Such scaffolding, writes Rollins, "provides an opportunity to lift students up to the next level by providing what they need to move ahead right now."
Most students have gaps in their background knowledge and basic skills–gaps that can stand in the way of learning new concepts. For example, a student may be excited about studying probability–until he realizes that today's lesson on probability will require him to use fractions. As his brain searches frantically for his dim recollection of the rules for multiplying and dividing fractions, he feels defeated before he even begins.
To help every student move forward and experience success, Suzy Pepper Rollins recommends that teachers anticipate possible gaps in knowledge and build scaffolds into each lesson to address these gaps. She describes a variety of tools to provide such support. For example, teachers can provide bookmarks that students can inconspicuously tuck into their textbooks and refer to as needed to remind them of grammar rules, verb conjugations, multiplication tables, integer rules, formulas, parts of a cell, vocabulary words, and so on. Or teachers can annotate some students' texts with helpful hints, such as word definitions or stars to indicate important paragraphs. Such scaffolding, writes Rollins, "provides an opportunity to lift students up to the next level by providing what they need to move ahead right now."
Michelle Bauml
Whether a teacher loves it or dreads it, lesson planning is a crucial step in the teaching process. Done effectively, collaborative lesson planning—in which teachers work together to design lessons—leads to increased professional learning, higher job satisfaction for teachers, and better lesson plans. The process poses challenges for both teachers and administrators, with a lack of time and teacher resistance to collaboration being two major barriers. Bauml suggests ways school leaders can address these barriers and create conditions for successful collaborative lesson planning at their school.
Ben Curran
Planning a lesson that sets all students up to learn successfully involves making a great many decisions about what to do throughout the lesson. To make this planning less overwhelming, the author focuses on a part of lesson planning that doesn't always get much attention: the first 10 to 15 minutes of a lesson. He walks readers through key decisions a teacher must make in planning a lesson's introduction, including how to give students a context, a learning target, and an overall purpose for the learning involved in the lesson; and whether direct or indirect instructional methods would be best for the particular skills being taught. The author gives several examples of what a good plan for a lesson introduction might look like, including a brief teacher script and preplanned questions, instructions, and scaffolds for struggling students.
Nicola Giardina
A three-year grant program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City encourages teachers to draw connections between curricular topics and works of art. In this article, museum educator Nicola Giardina describes how the program uses inquiry-based lessons to create meaningful learning experiences for underserved students. She highlights teachers who have visited the museum to pair artwork with topics of study in their discipline-specific classes. Giardina also describes the inquiry process that the teachers use to facilitate these lessons. Dubbed "The Pyramid of Inquiry," teachers first ask students to observe the work of art, then make evidence-based inferences, and finally interpret the art. In closing, Giardina explains how teachers can use this lesson planning tool for any arts-integrated lesson—whether you can take a trip to a museum or not.
Bryan Goodwin
Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey
Catlin Tucker
Thomas R. Hoerr
Carol Ann Tomlinson
Otis Kriegel
In this article, veteran educator Otis Kriegel provides eight questions that teachers can ask themselves as they create or tweak lesson plans. With practical, straightforward advice, Kriegel suggests that teachers be mindful of who their audience is, how much students already know, and what materials they'll need. He also urges teachers to consider their preparedness for the lesson, the role of the students, as well as how to check for understanding and differentiate lessons to meet the needs of every student.
Samantha Bennett
Education consultant Samantha Bennett describes an inquiry unit in which 2nd graders practice the habits of lepidopterists to learn about butterflies and to create a literary nonfiction story that incorporated their butterfly research. She takes the reader through the teacher's process of planning this unit, including choosing the "4 T's" of topics, tasks, texts, and learning targets. The article shows how the teacher planned what students would do during class time and what products they would make to show they'd mastered "supporting targets" along the way to the long-term learning targets. Bennett also describes how, throughout the unit, this teacher used what she learned while looking at student work to inform her continuing instruction.
Michelle Stephan
Although most tasks that STEM professionals engage in–like identifying problems, making models, and testing those models–involve inquiry, many STEM classes still rely on direct instruction. Stephan argues that even as new resources for active learning are being developed for STEM instruction, many teachers aren't using these resources and tasks connected to them in ways that let learners engage in true inquiry. She offers a framework for helping teachers plan inquiry-based STEM lessons and gives suggestions for how to launch an inquiry-based lesson in a way that leaves the work of unpacking the problem and exploring ways to solve it (the cognitive demand) to students. She provides two examples of a teacher's introduction to the same task involving the relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference–One is so prescriptive that students lose the chance for true inquiry. The other invites students to explore the problem and come up with their own methods for solving it.
Naomi Thiers
Copyright © 2012 by ASCD
Subscribe to Educational Leadership magazine and save up to 51% OFF the cover price.
Tweets by ELmagazine