Teaching Plans

Authors: Dr. Saphida Migabo (Biology) and Dr. William J.  Owen (Psychology)

You should always have a teaching or lesson plan, whether you a giving a lecture, leading a tutorial or a laboratory session. A teaching plan provides structure for your classes. Below is a list of basic things you need to consider when developing your lesson plan.

• Lesson Title: What is the title for this specific lesson?
• Topic to Teach: What is it that you want to teach? Consider the main concepts and objectives of the course.
• Specific Objectives: Develop clear, measurable and specific objectives/outcomes for the session.
• Learning Outcome(s): What will the students be able to do or know by end of the session? How will you know that you achieved your objective?
• Materials Required: What materials, resources, technology will be required for this lesson?
• Lesson Procedure & Learning Tasks: This can be broken into 3 main parts: Introductory, Instructional methods and Conclusion or closure.

• Introductory: Your introduction can make or break your session. Consider how you will focus your student’s attention. Do you need to provide students any background information?
• Main activity & Instruction methods: What methods, activities or techniques will you use? In this step, you should have a detailed step by step description of everything you will be doing during the lesson. Consider the order which the materials will be presented and allocate approximate time to complete each activity.
• Conclusion or closure: What will you do to summarize your lesson? Recap key concepts? Preview of future topics? Review application of the knowledge?

• Class Management: If you are planning any classroom activities, will students work in groups? If so, how many in a group? Will all the groups carry out the activities, or one group will perform one part of the activity? How will the groups’ finding be reported to the rest of the class?
• Adaptations (For students with learning disabilities): What adaptations will you make for students with learning disabilities?
• Safety Precautions: Describe any specific safety concerns which must be addressed during the lesson.
• Student Products: Is there anything students will be producing during the lesson?
• Assessment and Evaluations: Will the students be assessed at the end of this lesson? If so, how? How will you determine that the students have learnt something from this lesson?
• Self-evaluation: Consider what worked, what did not work, how the session can be improved?