On this page you will find resources for the session where we start to discuss lesson planning and evaluation, and classroom management.
All the lessons you teach must be planned and evaluated. This is not a 'paper exercise' - it is an essential part of learning to teach effectively. For this reason, discussion of lesson planning forms is an important part of many of your curriculum sessions.
In this session we will discuss the purpose of lesson planning and evaluation. At this stage of the course, such a discussion can only be an introduction - to help you prepare for PTE. When you have experience of planning, teaching and evaluating lessons we will return to the topic to discuss how to plan lessons to take account of individual differences in pupils - planning for differentiation - and in the break between the two periods of PTE we will discuss the issue once more to ensure that the focus of your planning is by then firmly on pupils' learning and its assessment.
Lesson planning in the PGCE course
Because developing the ability to plan and evaluate lessons effectively is such an important part of learning to teach, it forms part of a significant number of curriculum sessions. The tables below list the sessions in which the discussion or production of lesson plans plays an important part.
Three curriculum sessions devoted to discussing aspects of lesson planning:
| Today | where the purpose and format of lesson plans and evaluations are introduced |
| December 10 | where planning lessons to take account of individual differences is discussed in more detail |
| February 4 | where the focus is on ensuring that you plan for pupils' learning and its assessment |
Five other curriculum sessions in which you write or evaluate lesson plans:
| October 1 | In the 'Reviewing and modifying 1' session the difference between lesson plans and lesson resources is discussed. |
| October 2 | In the 'Developing ideas 1' session you write a lesson plan in which the 'same' product (a house drawn in Logo) is written in a variety of ways. |
| October 23 | In the 'Finding out 5' session you write plans to teach the same topic at Key Stage 3 and 4, to examine progression in capability. |
| November 5 | In the 'Developing ideas 5' session you write a plan for a lesson in which there is a 'circus' of activities. |
| November 12 | In the 'Exchanging and sharing 4' session you write a plan for a lesson in which the pupils work in groups, the various members of which may be doing different tasks. |
| 9:30-10:10 | Introduction to lesson planning and evaluation |
| 10:10-11:00 | Task 1.1 |
| 11:00-11:50 | Sharing of plans and discussion of similarities and differences (includes coffee break) |
| 11:50-12:10 | Task 1.2 - and posting of revised lesson plans to Tim Brosnan |
| 12:10-12:30 | Lesson evaluations |
| 12:30-1:00 | Task 3 |
Note that 'Task 2' is an activity to be done during your period of observation in PTE school 1.
This task is in two parts:
Part 1: You are to write (in groups of 3/4) a plan for one lesson in a sequence in which pupils in Key Stage 3 write their own web pages. Your lesson plan should be written on the Institute's pro-forma.
You will find it useful to consult the National Curriculum for Key Stage 3 and: unit 9 of the DfEE Scheme of Work for KS3, Publishing on the Web.
You may also find it useful to check your plan against the items listed in 'Good and bad lesson plans'.
Part 2: You should rewrite the lesson plan in the light of the discussion and after having compared it with those produced by other groups.
When the plans have been rewritten they will be posted to the course web site for everyone to look at and compare. This is a link to the index of the lesson plans (Another is from the main index above).
The more observant amongst you may have noticed that there is no 'Learning Objectives' section for this session and think it strange that this is the only curriculum session for which this is the case - especially given the topic. This was on purpose. Task 3 is to work out what the learning objectives for this session were. In pairs you should answer the following two questions and then we will discuss your answers.
- What do you think were the learning objectives for this session?
- What evidence will I have of the extent to which they have been achieved?
The Institute has produced pro-formas for both lesson planning and lesson evaluation which can be downloaded as Word files. However, if your school has its own pro-formas and your SCT and/or SPT asks you to use these, please do so.
The DfEE has also produced a blank lesson planning pro-forma and if you prefer to use this, again feel free to do so.
An Internet search on 'lesson planning' will result in a large number of hits (over 23,000 the last time I looked using AltaVista), but take care. Most of these are NOT lesson plans (or advice on them), but lesson resources. In addition most of the advice you will find is from some American sites which adopt a 'behaviourist' approach and are not really useful.
You should read section 2.2 "Schemes of work and lesson planning" (pp 53-64) of 'Learning to teach in the Secondary School' by Susan Capel, Marylin Leask and Tony Turner (Institute library reference Seb Ref CAP).
| This page is maintained
by Tim Brosnan. Please send any comments to: t.brosnan@ioe.ac.uk
Last updated on 24th
September 2001 .
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