Overview:
Lesson plans are at the center of the creative teaching process that enables an effective teacher to synthesize knowledge of the learners, the curriculum, and the context of teaching. Lesson plans produce more unified classes and helps teachers think about their objectives, the sequence of activities, the materials to be used, and relationships between the current lesson and past or future lessons. Lesson plans help teachers make connections more explicit and meaningful to students.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Identify, describe, and design a lesson plan for music,
- Write observable behavioral objectives,
- Identify age-appropriate psychomotor, cognitive, and affective skills for younger students,
- Identify high-quality teaching materials,
- Design music learning procedures through inductive and deductive methods,
- Organize instructional procedures in sequential order,
- Describe age-appropriate assessments, and
- Identify ways in which technology can be used to evaluate student learning.
Module Summary
This module defined the elements of a lesson plan and described the rationale behind each. Examples of lesson plan templates were provided as a means of demonstrating lesson flow and sequence.
Key elements of lesson plan design included observable behavioral objectives with appropriate action verbs, the selection of materials, the design and sequence of teaching procedures based on inductive and deductive models, lesson closure, and forms of lesson assessment. Decisions must be made as to whether a lesson will be teacher-centered or student-centered. Because active lessons help to keep students focused and on-task, a student-centered approach is more appropriate for younger children. Collaborative or cooperative learning teaching models are also effective in motivating and engaging students. This module also covered the ways in which technology could assist in efficiently assessing student readiness and progress.
Studying lesson plan design will assist students to synthesize the elements necessary for effectively sequenced lesson plans and help in connecting goals and objectives to measurable assessments.