How can you survive lesson planning (Math-AQ)

As a student, I have never gave any thought of any lesson plan that my teachers have had in my past education. When I was younger, I had this thought that my teachers just somehow show up to class with nothing planned and teach the class the lesson.

Everything changed when I started my Teacher College at Brock.

Lesson Planning is terrifying…

I remember staying up late every night before and during my first practice teaching and trying to plan every single lesson that I need to teach the next day. I spent all night highlighting my curriculum and typing possible lesson plan and fun engaging activity to motivate my students while trying to record what I have observed during my lessons. Lesson planning is not easy, however, a lot of new teachers did not received enough education and training in lesson planning.

Tip #1: Create a unit plan before you make your individual lesson plans.

It may be scary for new teachers to make a whole unit plan. You might wonder: where should I start?The answer it all in the curriculum. In Ontario curriculum, you have overall expectations and specific expectations in every subject you teach.  Also look into the big ideas to make sure your unit is aiming to cover these expectations. By using big ideas in lesson planning, teachers have an end goal in mind and also learn to present math concepts in a connected manner. This requires teachers to have solid understandings of the key mathematical concepts for their students’ ability as well as an understanding of how those concepts connect with students’ prior and future learning (A Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics Kindergarten to Grade 3, 2003; Number Sense and Numeration Grades 4 to 6 ,2006).

Tip #2: Three-part-lesson can save your life.

Capacity Bulding Series, Learning Blocks for Literacy and Numeracy link: http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesLIT/ProfessionalLearning/LiteracyinClassroomInstruction/LearningBlocks.pdf

Three-part lesson is introduced in this document, the goal of this kind of planning is to encourage students’ engagement in math lessons. By structuring math lesson around students’ interests and abilities. Students will be more engaged with the lesson material. This lesson planning method also encourage teachers to ask more higher-order thinking question which increase students' engagement during lessons.

Tip #3: Use different entry points and parallel tasks in the lesson.  

It is common for today’s classroom to have students with huge education gap and different academic abilities. When teachers are planning their lesson or introducing a new math concept, it is necessary for teachers to find an entry or different entry point that can be applicable to different students. Teachers can group students according their abilities and use task that will work for them or present a common topic that can be apply to all the students. During consolidation phrase parallel tasks can be used to evaluate students’ learning throughout the lesson/ unit.