Lesson Plan Analysis (UBC – ETEC 512)
To me, one of the more useful exercises in ETEC 512 was the Lesson Plan Assignment. Not having had any formal teaching training, I had no experience developing lesson plans – my lessons were generally planned out in my head, and they generally involved lists of things I needed to mention to the students before they could start the lab exercise. So, when asked to present a lesson plan and then propose improvements to it, I chose to first “translate” one of my lab lessons into an actual formal lesson plan.
That in itself was instructive – I saw that I intuitively did some things which seemed to be supported by several learning theories – but the real “pay-off” came when I spent some time reflecting on that lesson plan in order to make improvements to it (based on all the learning theories we had discussed in the course). It resulted in a much improved plan, with clear reasoning behind every component.
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Open in new tab This was a bit of an “eye-opener”, it showed me that the benefit of having a written plan is that it facilitates this type of analysis and increases the potential for improvement. This is a lesson I plan to apply to any future teaching work – I feel like not having formal/written study plans has limited my effectiveness in the past, or at least has impacted my ability to reflect on past teaching and make reasoned decisions about improvement.
It also sparked an idea for a personal project:
