Teacher Candidate
WELL-STRUCTURED LESSONS
CAP Element 1
CAP Element Description
Develops well-structured lessons with challenging, measurable objectives and appropriate student engagement strategies, pacing, sequence, activities, materials, resources, technologies, and grouping.
OVERVIEW
Lesson plans are what I consider to be the very beginning of all classes. The lesson plan is the scaffold and the skeleton from which learning and knowledge is built around. Successful lesson plans clearly outline the goals, key points, activities, and materials. Each lesson plans for when and how students should be engaged. In my teaching practicum, my lesson plans were developed using the Wiggins and McTighe “Understanding by Design” template. This template provided the guidelines for clear and well-structured lessons by involving critical thinking from the teacher. This template is shown in the gallery below and is described in the next section, Lesson Plan Development.
LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE
LESSON PLAN SAMPLE
Lesson Plan Development
When I first start developing a lesson, I begin with my motivation and goal for the lesson. With a chosen standard to address, I create a clear understanding of the learning goals for students and the evidence which will show me learning has occurred. I then explore materials and notes from other teachers for those lessons. Often I found that discussions with my supervising practitioner would guide me to choose materials that were successful in previous classes. This saved a lot of concern and time, since my biggest struggle creating lesson plans were choosing activities which were both effective and engaging. After I chose the activities and materials to use in class, I would reevaluate the lesson and ensure the effectiveness of each activity by vetting the materials and modifying them for my different levels of classes. I also created my lessons in the context of my other lessons of the week or unit, then added homework and application topics which would lead more seamlessly into my next lessons. Since my students only saw me in class every other week, I struggled in lesson development with ensuring that each week of lessons taught an entire unit or series of connected lessons. At times, classes would move slower than I expected or need extra help on a concept, and this would push some parts of my lessons into the future weeks of class. This interrupted flow quite a bit, since students would lose a lot of progress over the week outside my class. The planning in accordance with Worcester Tech’s unique schedule became easier as the practicum progressed especially with the guidance of my mentor teacher.
Class Structure
In my class, I experimented with different activities and class plans, but kept the structure generally the same. Each day at the beginning of class, the students would take out homework, notebooks, and a pencil. I presented the agenda, and then began each lesson demonstrating or presenting new information. Then I provided instructions for the assigned activity. At the end of class, we would review the concepts of the day and introduce the homework with some time to start at the end of the period. Some lessons would vary on this structure as well, especially for labs, interactive simulations, review days, or other more immersive activities such as stations around the room. In reference to my preliminary teaching goal, I aimed to create diverse modes of teaching for a diverse collection of learners. Consideration of this goal during each lesson planning time pushed me to develop and change lessons to meet more learners’ needs and experiment with different non-traditional lesson formats.
ACTIVATORS
Activators are short questions I would pose to students to assess their understanding of previous concepts or new ones to pace the lesson that day.
SUMMARY/EXIT SLIP
At the end of a lesson, I would have students start homework or complete short activities to re-cap their learning.
This word web was designed by me to assess student understanding of concepts and to practice their language context skills.
CELL EXPLORATION ACTIVITY
Below are the printed papers which were spread around the room in my interactive cell exploration lesson. The students walked around the room scanning QR codes with their phones to find out more about each cell part. The different cell structures were placed in specific areas or on specific items that related to the function. For example, the lysosome was placed above the trash can since lysosomes remove wastes from the cell.
 |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
My growth
In the beginning of my practicum, I followed the style of my supervising practitioner’s lessons. He would teach one lesson at the beginning of the day, and then I used the lesson materials and powerpoints that he used for the following four classes. This was where my comfort level was at the beginning of the semester. After observations, I was merely getting my feet wet by using his lessons and discussions as a model for my own. I would develop lesson plans each day as the lesson was presented by my mentor teacher.
As my practicum progressed, I grew more comfortable and autonomous as a student teacher. I still used the resources or suggestions from the meetings I would have each day with my mentor teacher. In subsequent weeks about half way into the practicum, I created my own resources and modified lessons I found online or from my supervising practitioner. Some resources I generated were completely self-developed and original. I relied less on the constant input from my mentor teacher, and used him as a resource for advice once I determined what my lessons were.
Truly I made big steps toward autonomy in the classroom with lesson structures and plans. Reflecting now on my practicum, I would have liked to explore more into backwards design of lessons for entire units. Most of my lessons were created with future lessons in mind, but ideally, I would have liked to have a larger scope of the lessons I would have in the future. In some instances, students would say, “sometimes I don’t understand why we learn certain things in biology.” I think I would be much better equipped for answers to those questions if I had a plan for an entire quarter, semester, or even year.
INTERACTIVE COLORING ACTIVITIES
After recognizing that my students enjoyed coloring and following along as I colored in worksheets with them, I created new ways to integrate coloring in class especially in ways that visually support concepts. For the activity about diffusion, coloring gradients was helpful in supporting the concept of chemical movement in student note sheets. The concept is dynamic in nature, and this portrayal of diffusion best exemplified this process to my students.
 Projector setup in class |  Student cell transport chart 2 |  Student cell transport chart 1 |
|---|
Technology in the classroom
Technology was integrated into each of my lessons in different capacities. Each day with few exceptions I used my classroom projector with online powerpoint notes or other online simulations/demonstrations. Technology was at times difficult to include for each student in my lessons, since access to chromebooks or the internet in class had to be coordinated with other teachers within Worcester Tech. On the days I could provide a class with 1:1 technology, students could create their own documents, interact with online tools, or explore stations around the room. One of my 100 students did not have a phone or access to a computer at home. Ahead of time I would plan for extra class time so she could complete the same lesson, or I would provide the assignment in non-digital format if that was equally as enriching as the online format.
My interest in technology in the class grew as I learned more about different online resources through professional development and discussions with other science teachers at Worcester Tech. I found resources such as CK-12 online simulations, EdPuzzle interactive videos, Kahoot quizzes, and Virtual Reality YouTube videos.
Explore the videos below for a peek at the online resources I used in the classroom.
