Lesson planning, design and microteaching

What this heading covers

Planning a lesson so that it has a destination, and practising the skills that get a class there.

Teaching-learning materials and ICT are headings of their own and have a lesson of their own.

A lesson plan is a teacher's thinking made explicit before the lesson, not a document to be submitted. The questions reflect that: they are about whether an objective can be checked, whether the order of the steps makes sense, and whether the practice is practice of something in particular.

Objectives that can be observed

The usable form states what the learner will be able to do — because that is what can be checked.

	Example	Why
Weak	"To teach the water cycle"	Describes the teacher's action
Weak	"To complete the chapter on fractions"	A topic, not an outcome
Weak	"Students will understand fractions"	Understand cannot be observed
Usable	"Learners will be able to label the stages of the water cycle and explain what drives each"	Observable, checkable
Usable	"Learners will be able to compare two fractions with unlike denominators and justify which is greater"	Observable, checkable

The test: could you watch a class and tell whether it had happened? If not, it is not yet an objective.

Two words to distinguish, since an item uses them: an aim is broad and long-term ("to develop scientific temper"); an objective is specific and achievable in one lesson ("learners will be able to classify five given materials as transparent or opaque").

Bloom's taxonomy

The revised form gives the ladder, lowest to highest: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create. The complaint the syllabus makes is that most planning and most testing stop at the first two.

Level	Verbs that make it observable
Remember	list, name, state, define, recall
Understand	explain, describe, summarise, give an example of
Apply	use, solve, demonstrate, calculate, classify
Analyse	compare, distinguish, categorise, find the reason for
Evaluate	judge, justify, defend, decide which, criticise
Create	design, compose, construct, plan, invent

Avoid know, understand, appreciate, be aware of and learn in the objective line — not because they are wrong as aims, but because nothing in the room shows whether they happened.

The three domains are also examinable: cognitive (knowing and thinking), affective (attitudes, interests, values), psychomotor (physical skill). A good plan has more than the first — a science lesson that only reports facts has left out the attitude and the skill the subject exists to build.

The parts of a lesson plan

Formats differ between institutions; these parts are common to nearly all of them.

Part	What goes in it
Heading	Class, subject, topic, date, duration
Learning outcomes / objectives	What the learner will be able to do, in observable terms
Previous knowledge	What they already know that this rests on, and how you will check
Teaching-learning materials	Including anything learners bring
Introduction / motivation	A question, object or experience that opens from the near and known
Presentation / development	In steps: what the teacher does, what the learners do, the questions to be asked
Blackboard work	Planned, not improvised
Recapitulation	Drawing it together; checking the outcome
Evaluation	How you will know the objective was reached
Homework / follow-up	Preferably something done outside the book

Two columns are worth keeping side by side — teacher activity and learner activity — because the balance between them is visible at a glance, and a plan whose learner column is nearly empty is not a plan for learning.

A plan is a plan, not a script. Adjusting it because of what the class actually does is good teaching, not failure — and an item describing a teacher sticking to the plan while the class is lost has the wrong answer built in.

A worked outline — fractions, class IV

• Outcome: learners can compare two fractions with the same numerator and say which is larger, with a reason.
• Previous knowledge: halves and quarters; sharing equally.
• Materials: paper strips, one per child.
• Introduction: "Would you rather have half a chapati or a quarter?" — answers and reasons taken.
• Development: each child folds a strip into halves, another into quarters, another into eighths; the strips are laid one under the other. "What happens to the piece as the number of pieces goes up?"
• Blackboard: the three strips drawn one under another; ½, ¼, ⅛ written under them.
• Recapitulation: pairs compare ⅓ and ⅕ using their strips and state the rule in their own words.
• Evaluation: three pairs of fractions to compare and justify.
• Follow-up: find something at home divided into equal parts, and say how many.

Plans above the lesson

• A unit plan covers a whole unit over several lessons, with the sequence, the materials and the assessment planned together.
• A year or annual plan distributes the syllabus across the available weeks.
• The lesson plan sits inside both, which is why "to complete the chapter" is a planning statement in the wrong place as well as a weak objective.

Two structures the paper names

Herbartian steps: preparation (linking to previous knowledge), presentation, comparison and association, generalisation, application, recapitulation. Traditional and teacher-led, but still asked, and the order is the examinable part — generalisation comes after the examples, not before.

The 5E model, which fits the constructivist position better:

Stage	What happens
Engage	Rouse interest and surface what learners already think
Explore	Learners investigate before being told
Explain	The idea is named and organised — by learners first, then the teacher
Elaborate	Applied to a new situation
Evaluate	What was learned is checked

Note the order: learners explore before the teacher explains. That is the whole point of the model, and putting Explain before Explore is the commonest way it is got wrong in an examination.

Planning for teaching mathematics

A named heading on the primary track, and what it adds to the general case:

• Check the prerequisite, not the chapter. Mathematics is cumulative; a lesson on fractions fails if equal sharing is not secure, and the plan should include how that will be checked in the first five minutes.
• Plan the concrete stage, not only the symbol. Concrete, then pictorial, then symbolic — in that order, and with time allowed for the first.
• Plan the examples and the non-examples. Four squares and a rectangle teach "square" better than four squares alone.
• Anticipate the error. A good mathematics plan names the mistake the class will probably make — adding denominators, forgetting to carry, giving an area in centimetres — and plans the question that will expose it.
• Plan the questions, not only the explanation. "Why?" and "How do you know?" belong in the plan.
• Plan for the range: what the learner who finishes in four minutes will do next.

Microteaching

A training technique, developed at Stanford in the 1960s, for practising one teaching skill at a time under simplified conditions.

Scaled down on every dimension:

	Ordinary class	Microteaching
Duration	35–45 minutes	about 5–10 minutes
Learners	30–40	about 5–10
Content	A full topic	A small unit
Skills practised	Many at once	One

The cycle: plan → teach → feedback → re-plan → re-teach → re-feedback. The feedback, immediate and specific, is what makes it work; without it the exercise is only a short lesson. The whole cycle is sometimes given as taking about 36 minutes — 6 for each stage — and that figure appears in questions.

The skills commonly practised

Skill	What is being practised
Introducing a lesson	Linking to previous knowledge, rousing interest, stating the direction
Questioning	Clear, distributed, varied in level
Probing questions	Following up an incomplete answer instead of passing to someone else
Explaining	Sequence, linking words, no vagueness
Illustrating with examples	Simple, relevant, and including non-examples
Stimulus variation	Movement, gesture, voice, focusing, changing the interaction pattern
Reinforcement	Using encouragement and acknowledgement deliberately
Blackboard writing	Legibility, layout, planned use
Closure	Pulling together, linking forward

What it is good for, and what it is not

Strengths: a complex performance is broken into parts that can each be improved; feedback is immediate; it is safe to fail; progress on one skill is visible.

Limits: the class is small and artificial; the content is trivial by design; and a real class is not the sum of isolated skills. Microteaching is training, not teaching, and an item that treats it as a substitute for classroom experience has the wrong answer in it.

Questions of the kind the paper sets

Which is the best-framed objective for a lesson on air pressure? (a) To explain air pressure to the students (b) To complete the chapter on air (c) Students will know about air pressure (d) Learners will be able to demonstrate that air exerts pressure and explain the observation

(a) and (b) describe the teacher; (c) uses a verb that cannot be observed.

In the 5E model, the stage that comes immediately before "Explain" is — (a) Engage (b) Explore (c) Elaborate (d) Evaluate

Which verb is least suitable in a statement of objectives? (a) Classify (b) Compare (c) Understand (d) Demonstrate

"Learners will be able to justify which of two methods is more efficient" belongs to which level of the revised taxonomy? (a) Remember (b) Apply (c) Analyse (d) Evaluate

Attitudes, interests and values belong to the — (a) cognitive domain (b) affective domain (c) psychomotor domain (d) none of these

In microteaching, the essential element that distinguishes it from a short lesson is — (a) the small class (b) the short duration (c) immediate feedback followed by re-teaching (d) the simple content

Microteaching is best described as — (a) a method of teaching a class (b) a technique for training a teacher in one skill at a time (c) a form of assessment (d) a lesson for slow learners

A teacher's plan assumes learners can already share equally, but the opening questions show they cannot. The teacher should — (a) continue with the plan (b) teach the prerequisite first and return to the planned lesson later (c) move faster to finish (d) give the class written work instead

In the Herbartian steps, generalisation comes — (a) before presentation (b) after comparison and association (c) first (d) after application

Mistakes that cost marks here

• Writing objectives in terms of what the teacher will do, or with unobservable verbs — know, understand, appreciate.
• Offering a topic ("complete the chapter") where an objective is wanted.
• Confusing an aim with an objective.
• Putting Explain before Explore in the 5E model.
• Getting the Herbartian order wrong, especially generalisation before the examples.
• Planning only in the cognitive domain and forgetting the affective and psychomotor.
• Treating the plan as a script that must be followed whatever the class does.
• Treating microteaching as a short ordinary lesson. It is one skill, with feedback and re-teaching.
• Treating microteaching as a substitute for real classroom experience.
• In mathematics, planning the symbol without the concrete stage, or not planning for the expected error.

In one line

A plan earns its name when someone could watch the class and tell whether the objective was met — so the objective names what the learner will do, the order lets them explore before they are told, and the practice that improves teaching is practice of one nameable skill with feedback attached.

In the classroom

Before preparing anything, finish this sentence: at the end of this lesson, a learner who understood will be able to ______. If the blank cannot be filled with something you could watch a child do, the lesson has no objective yet, and no amount of material will supply one.

Then look at the two columns of the plan. If the teacher column is long and the learner column is short, the lesson is about you. Moving three lines from the left column to the right is usually the whole of the improvement.