Lesson Plan Development - Articles - Andrew Schwartz

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Lesson Plan Development
by Andrew E. Schwartz

Lesson plans, believe it or not, are a lot llike the maps you have in the back seat of your car. They’re probably not covered with the ketchup and pencil marks that your maps are, but they are directional guides. You need some way of checking to see if you are on the right road in your lcassroom or on the highway. A lesson plan is really nothing more than a map of where you and your students will be heading for the time you are together. To paraphrase the American Express Card commercial, “Lesson plans - don’t leave home without them.”

“Do I really need a lesson plan?” asks someone in the audience. Yes, you do. An important part of the preparation for your session lies in your lesson planning efforts. There are several good reasons for constructing a lesson plan for every session in which you are involved.

Properly outlined, a lesson plan will outline the priorities you want to cover in a logical and systematic sequence.
The plan will help you stay on the proper track and lead you to your stated objectives without time-consuming tangents and loss of momentum.
By staying with your game plan, you are better assured of having your trainees attain the prescribed goals.
With a well-constructed format, you’ll be self-confident, knowing that you are prepared in advance.
If your session is one that is repeated in other groups, the preparation and planning you have undertaken can be easily used by another instructor in your absence, or by you for a different group of trainees.

As any traveler can attest, amps also come in a variety of sizes and formats according to the area covered. Lesson plans are no different, and their formats vary according to the size, purpose, and subject of the lesson.

In developing lesson plan formats, two things are paramount: extraordinarily careful documentation and room left for possible changes. Sloppy accounting of the direction your class will be going is worse than none. And documentation that doesn’t have leeway for change is almost instantly obsolete.

The types of plan formats generally used are the: outline, sentence outline, narrative outline, narrative. The primary difference is in the amount of information and narrative in the body of the presentation. Your plan for a presentation should be at least a sentence outline or preferably a narrative outline.

All maps have common information, called the legend, which tells you how to read them. The lesson plan should also have a legend (the cover sheet) which tells the presentor what the learning environment will be. The cover sheet includes the course title, the lesson title, the length of time for the lesson, the target audience, the performance objectives, the evaluation procedures, and the equipment and supplies needed for you and your students.

Although your department may have a specific format for this information the purpose is more important than the format.

The course title or lesson title should accurately reflect the content of the lesson or course and be stated simply.

The length of time for the lesson should include time required for lesson presentation and suggested time, date, and hour at which lesson delivery would be most effective.

The target population entry shgould answer several questions. What skill level will the trainees have? Is the content appropriate for the audience? Will the audience be homogeneous, or a “mixed” group of people with different backgrounds, ages, and job skills?

Similarly, the performance objectives should answer this very basic question — what should the trainees be able to do at the end of the training period that they were was not able to do at the beginning of it?

For evaluation procedures, how will the trainee’s accomplishment of performance objectives be demonstrated or measured (written test, skill test, skill demonstration)? Evaluation procedures should provide documentation of the achievement of all performance objectives.

For equipment and supplies needed, what is available? What must be used? What cannot be used? What unusual items will be needed?

Any special student materials? Instructor materials? Handouts? Lesson plan for the students? Manuals? Visual Aids? Props?

When entering space requirements calculate room size, number of rooms, seating requirements, seating arrangement, writing surface needs, and any special training environment needs.

The cover sheet or legend for the elsson plan should also include perofrmance objectives. Any statement comprehensively describing the intended outcome and instructional intent should include the following:

a description of intended outcome in terms of student performance
a statement of what learners must be able to do or perform when they demonstrate mastery of the objective
a description of relevant or important conditions under which the performance is expected to occur
a statement of the criteria by which achievement will be judged
a measurement of how well must students perform for your satisfaction.

Now that you know what you are going to teach, who you are going to teach it to, what you will need to teach it, and what you want the student to know or do, you must put this all together into a written plan.

But stop and reflect for a minute - How do we learn? The last time you learned something, what processes did you go through, and in what order? You probably learned them in this general order:

opportunity and motivation to learn,
step-by-step,
practice or applied learning,
measure against a standard,
reflect upon the experience.

Since these are the steps we follow to learn things naturally, the class (and the lesson plan) should reflect this process.

An effective lecture or training presentation is the result of a specific development process. The effort of preparing your lesson is really only the beginning. Once the guidelines for presenting your material have been established, however, maximum impact can be achieved far more certainly and with far less anxiety for the instructor. By following the simple steps outlined above, you can be assured that there will be no waste of time in the classroom. Every minute of the valuable time allotted for training will be used to the fullest by you and your trainees.

Andrew E. Schwartz, CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates of Boston, MA a comprehensive management training and professional development organization offering over 40 skills specific programs and practical solutions to today's business challenges.

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