InTASC Standard 7: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.
Lesson Planning
The last step in my planning process is the development of daily lesson plans. In order to prepare to plan my daily instruction, I use the long-term plan, unit plan, and any applicable IEP documents as outlines that connect the standards and content with our big goals. My lesson plan, in turn, is the detailed guide to what I hope occurs on a given day.
Table of Contents
Pre-Kindergarten: Lesson Plan-Space
As a teacher, I allocate the most amount of time to lesson planning, as I feel it has the greatest impact on my students’ day-to-day lives. It is also the area in which I feel most autonomous to create novel experiences for my children, and incorporate content that is interesting to both my students and me.
I follow the dialogic reading method for my ELA instruction, which is a research-based approach to engaging students in literacy, through the use of prompts and questioning while reading text (Whitehurst, 2014). During dialogic reading, I utilize one anchor text for the duration of a learning cycle, which lasts typically five to seven days. Each day, I read the text, to further immerse my students in the story. However, each lesson has a different learning objective, gradually building off each other in order to layer student understanding of the text complexity. For me, Dialogic reading serves a similar purpose in pre-Kindergarten as close reading does in upper elementary grades.
As I plan a daily lesson, I first frame the lesson around the criteria for the standard, as well as criteria for the specific learning target. I also develop tentative interventions for two categories of students- students who master the target and students who don’t. These interventions provide me and my support personnel with “in the moment” follow up steps to support students, regardless of where they are on the continuum of mastering the daily objective.
The lesson plan to the left details the instruction for the first four days of my Space unit, and outlines the dialogic reading cycle. The anchor text, Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle, is read several times over the course of the week, and students layer their understanding by engaging in predicting/previewing, building and using new vocabulary, asking and answering story related questions, retelling the story, and writing in response to the text. The lesson plan also outlines cross-curricular activities present during the structure of the day.
When I plan the body of my lessons, I strike a "happy medium" between routine and novelty. Consistent practices and familiar structures positively impact my students, particularly those with time and organization oriented constitutions. On the other hand, elements of suspense and surprise can ignite curiosity and fuel active participation. I utilize these "joy-factors" during the hook of my lesson, in order to garner students' attention, and proceed into an explicit model of the skill. When possible, I use a strong model of student work as a discussion starter, and have students reflect on the piece against the criteria, which is presented in an age-appropriate language anchor chart.
Following one or two models as part of the "I-do", the bulk of my lesson is spent in guided practice, maximizing student-to-student conversations. Guided practice gives me the time to provide individualized, immediate academic feedback, which in turn allows students additional opportunities to practice a given skill successfully. Guided practice supports the development of appropriate social and language skills, which are two significant developmental categories students are assessed in through TSG. This section is also an opportunity for students with exceptionalities to work towards their social or behavior objectives, as outlined on their Individualized Education Plan (IEP). When I plan my guided practice, or the "We-Do", I consciously implement strategies that lend themselves to student-facilitated discussions for this purpose, and often strategically pair students.
The last part of my instruction serves as the independent application of the learning target for the day, or the "You Do", followed by a formative check. As the year progresses, students begin to engage in the self-assessment process, as they reflect on their learning and what behaviors or actions led them to those results. While I provide an quick “ticket out the door” in order to close a whole-group lesson, which can be an oral response or peer conversation, I further assess individual or small groups of students during learning center.
To wrap up the planning process, I then place related activities in the daily agenda, to further enhance the theme of the unit. Students engage in thematic sing-alongs during morning meeting, eat special crafted snacks, and read supplementary books, often non-fiction texts in transition activities (i.e. moving from phonemic awareness to nap). Support personnel follow a plan as well in order to help strengthen the routine of our classroom. Using cross-curricular content in this fashion creates a seamless experience for my children. They are exposed to new content, which is aimed to increase their access to opportunity, without their awareness that it serves to enhance instruction.
The document to the left serves as a supplementary daily lesson plan for the support personnel in my classroom. The plan details important routines and classroom structures, which helps keep all parties on track so the day runs smoothly as possible. Additionally, it includes important directions for academic whole group instruction and small group rotations. Paraprofessionals actively facilitate small group instruction in order to reinforce the day's lesson objectives, or re-mediate a past skill. Writing an abbreviated guide to the day's activities helps me better support my paraprofessionals, so they in turn can better support our students.
Pre-Kindergarten: Lesson Flipchart
One important consideration when developing lesson plans is the activities and materials I select to support the learning objectives of the lesson. I choose materials that seek to sustain students’ attention, elicit a variety of thinking, provide time for reflection, as well as opportunities for student-to-student interaction, and induce suspense or curiosity. Some other things I consider when picking supplementary aides are manageability, lesson placing and structure, and individual needs of students with exceptionalities.
Incorporating technology is one way I like to capture students’ interest, particularly at the beginning of a lesson. Using my smart board to display PowerPoint or a Flipchart serves two purposes. It helps me organize the lesson structure and manage my time as I present the instructional content. I use these digital documents to display the learning target of the day, and visuals to support the “gradual release” of the lesson. I model the skill using examples on the Flipchart, and then slowly delegate the responsibility of the practice onto the students, using additional samples. Strong material choices, such as these, use relevant, recognizable images or examples in order to build my students’ confidence. The more connections my students make to the materials, the higher their motivation and engagement.
Additionally, technology based materials give students the chance to interact with the material by manipulating images, previewing content, engaging in song or dance, all while independently using real-world tools. As an early childhood educator, I am responsible for growing students’ foundational skills, and in this ever-changing world, those foundations include not only traditional literacy but technological literacy as well. My instructional choices, therefore, reflect the changing landscape of education.
This Flipchart supported my presentation of instructional content during my Space unit. While reading our two anchor texts, Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, and Moon Cake, students practiced the skill of identifying story related conflicts. This skill aligns with the TSG objective 18a- "interacts during read alouds and book conversations". The lesson utilized the Flipchart to introduce the learning target, review the definitions of Problem and Solution, give students choices, and provide students with opportunity to generate their own ideas of the concept through interactions with their peers, prior to reading the related text. This helps me determine students' acquisition of the skill in isolation with familiar content prior to its application to text.
Students use technology to be come active participants in their own learning. The image to the right shows a student using the Promethean Board to answer the Question of the Day on the Space Flipchart. This open-ended question gives students time to reflect, develop and answer, justify their reasoning, and leaves it open for a variety of responses. The choices shown act as a foundation for student response, particularly for students with language deficits-they can respond orally, using the images as visual cues, or indicate through pointing to a target image.
The use of technology also serves as a "hook" for the presentation of instructional content. Students are motivated by the chance to move and participate throughout the duration of the lesson.
Pre-Kindergarten: Student Work from lesson
Collecting and analyzing student work is a critical component of the planning cycle, and has significant impact on how I choose to proceed with future instruction, including the next day’s lesson. Additionally, cataloging student work provides the foundation for students’ TSG digital portfolio, which is shared and discussed with stakeholders.
The majority of student interaction occurs in the form of oral response, which is captured using video or anecdotal note. However, in order to keep a record of their progress towards their goal and to meet various learning styles, formative checks are presented in multiple modalities. Students have the option of orally responding without prompts, pointing as a way of identifying in response to a question, using a writing tool to circle or mark an image as a way of selecting, arranging pictures from the text in order to sequence, or using picture prompts to support their oral retell. Students may also engage in a combination of these options.
This particular sample assesses students’ mastery of the skill of retelling, specifically a familiar fiction text read aloud several times. Criteria for this objective include the identification of major characters, and two to three important events from the story, in an appropriate sequence. This formative check is administered in small group following the third reading of the text, Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle, during week 1 of my Space unit.
Designing activities and materials that assess student mastery also provide me an opportunity to further differentiate based on my students’ needs or exceptionalities. I originally designed this form as a way to illicit responses from non-verbal children, but felt it was best practice to use with all students in order to differentiate, and support their language and literacy development.
Depending on their previous work, students engage with this work in a few different ways. Students with advanced oral language development are asked to retell the story independently, and then complete the worksheet as an additional check. Students who require verbal, visual or physical prompts use pictures from the text to retell the story using a storyboard. Finally, a student with low oral language skills is directed asked/modeled the questions one by one, and the student can point, select, or circle the appropriate image.
The work is also designed to build off students' previous learning, by incorporating familiar characters, settings, or images from stories they've read in the past.
This student work sample assess the student's mastery of retelling (TSG objective 18c). This sample is from a High student, who accurately recounts and sequences the events from our Space anchor text, Papa Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle.
The video to the left shows two children engaging in space themed dramatic play during learning center time. The first student use her number sense to count back from 10, imitating the experience she has read about and witnessed in the thematic content from the week/unit. She and her partner both don astronaut helmets and recreate a spaceship scene with the use of props.
*All families have signed waivers allowing students to be seen and heard in videos.
Lesson planning and designing materials to support the learning objectives are core practices that are pivotal in pushing me closer to transformational teaching. Engaging in these processes and developing strong lessons equates to dramatic growth, as positive student outcomes.