The Science of Planning

To be honest, lesson and unit planning makes me extremely nervous. In fact, that was one of the things that I was fearing the most at the beginning of this semester. I couldn’t help but think, “I have no idea how to teach!” and “I don’t know how to go about creating a successful lesson!” These thoughts continuously raced through my head… until this week.

This week in AEE412, we focused on unit and lesson planning. We talked about the brain and how learning works. We also discussed the three domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor & affective) and the three types of lesson plans that compliment these domains (informational- cognitive, operational- psychomotor, managerial- affective). By discussing models, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Depths of Knowledge, Teacher-Centered/Student-Centered Instruction, Significant Learning and Understanding by Design, we are now better equipped to grasp the concept of unit and lesson planning and get started on our unit and lesson plans for student teaching.

This week’s readings only reinforced what was discussed in class. The reading by Newcomb, et al. focused mainly on objectives, which are an essential element of writing successful unit and lesson plans. Objectives can help guide the rest of your lesson, by laying the foundation for what you want students to learn from your lesson. The reading on Anticipatory Sets focused on lesson hooks, which are important in order to captivate student’s attention and focus on the lesson.

As I begin my unit planning and lesson planning within the next few days, I feel as though I will certainly be able to use both what was learned in class this week, as well as this week’s readings. I think that the models that we discussed in class will be especially helpful in my lesson planning endeavor because many of them provide a basic, visual framework that can help guide me. I also think that by understanding the types of lesson plans and how they appeal to different learning domains, I will be better able to create more varied lessons.

To say the least, after this week, I feel much better about lesson and unit planning. I believe that with the models and material that we discussed in class, I am better equipped to write and plan a successful unit and lesson.