Writing Lesson Plans...

When it comes to writing lesson plans, all teachers can think of is work,Work, WORK!! Successful lesson plans need to be thought out very carefully and tailored to fit your classroom. Each of your classes have a different groups of students with different capabilities. You may encounter a class that understands the lesson quicker than others. If you run into a class like this, you need to have a lesson plan that has other activities (maybe they are more challenging, maybe they are different, or maybe you move to the next lesson). As a teacher, being prepared with your lesson plans and the ability to change the classroom based on your students level is extremely important. 

My favorite part about writing a lesson plan is finding the anticipatory set! I think that the anticipatory set is the most important part of the lesson plan. Why you ask??? Well as a soon to be high school mathematics teacher, I feel that students do not have much interest in mathematics because they cannot relate to the process. Students also have a hard time seeing the end product, the reason why we learn the concepts in mathematics. As a teacher creating or finding the anticipatory set, I am finding the reason why students should be focusing on what I am teaching them. It is the hook of the lesson! I have to catch the students attention and Keep it! Whether I do this through a problem students often face or I find a really great YouTube video that keeps the kids excited about learning. 

My least favorite part of lesson planning is deciding what standards I can hit with every lesson. I think that choosing the standards is the most tedious part of the lesson. Often times the standards are written in awkward language and are hard to interpret. Also, when it comes to mathematics, most of the time the students that come into the classroom are behind so I have to teach them standards that they were supposed to learn from last year or a few years ago. 

I believe that when I am able to start teaching these lesson plans in a classroom I will be able to determine if I need more structure or options in certain areas. I also feel that my format of lesson planning may change as I accumulate more years of teaching experience. 

This is one of my assignments to receive my teaching credential. If I were to write this module that we just concluded. I would include a group assignment, which groups everyone based on their area. This assignment would have us all write a lesson plan. After we have all written our lesson plans, we would meet and talk about all of our lesson plans. (What we liked? What we didn't? Give each other ideas about the parts of our lesson plans. Talk about our experiences of trying certain things in the classroom.)