Lesson Plans

By Melissa Kelly, About.com Guide to Secondary Education

Creating effective lesson plans can make the difference between a productive day in class and one in which disruptions and issues are bound to arise. While the core of creating lesson plans is fairly straightforward, it takes some time to understand how much you will be able to cover in any one class. Continue to tweak your lesson plans each year, expanding, changing, and adding details to enrich your student's experience.

1. Lesson Plan Basics
2. Assessments
3. Reaching All Students
4. Warm Ups and Review

Lesson Plan Basics

To start creating effective lesson plans, you must begin with some of the basics. Here we cover the basics of creating a lesson plan. Once this is mastered, you can expand to create truly innovative and interest-building lessons.

• How to Write Lesson Plans
• Lesson Plan Template
• Integrating Curriculum
• Lecture Pros and Cons
• Whole Group Discussion Pros and Cons

• How to Hold a Class Debate
• Mini-Lessons
• Emergency Lesson Plans
• Creating Effective Field Trips

Assessments

Assessments are an extremely important part of any classroom. They show student learning, they help teachers reassess their lessons, and they are used in many cases by states to help prove sucessful completion of a course. Lessons should always be created with the appropriate assessments in mind. Create effective assessments that can help your students each and every day with the following tools and information.

• Assessment Item Creation and Review
• Bloom's Taxonomy
• Assessment Related Glossary Terms
• High Stakes Testing
• See FCAT Resources

Reaching All Students

As the teaching profession has evolved, teachers are required to do more to reach all students. While special education students have the benefit of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), regular students do not. Therefore, it is our job as teachers to do all we can to reach and teach all students. Following are some resources that can help you in this endeavor.

• Learning Styles
• Co-Teaching
• Special Education Acronyms

Warm Ups and Review

Warm ups are an excellent way for teachers to begin each period. They can help provide review of a previous topic or introduce new material. They give students something to accomplish of an educational nature while allowing the teacher time to take roll and perform other housekeeping duties.

• Language Arts Warm Ups
• Mathematics Warm Ups
• Science Warm Ups
• Social Studies Warm Ups