Lesson Planning

I was sad to miss class today and miss my first attempt at lesson planning, one of the things I am most worried about getting right as a teacher!  As a ESL tutor, I was not good at following my lessons plans, which were usually very broad and not as focused on the learner's goal as they should have been.  Reading the Understanding by Design article helps me to conceptualize the process of lesson planning.  I gave this article the greatest compliment I can give a document in CTools - I printed out a hard copy!  I will reference it when I am creating lesson plans. 

The concept of backward design makes sense because, as the authors say, it helps to prevent "activity-oriented" teaching.  Although it is important to plan engaging activities, those activities must be tied to and advance a learning goal.  Like Bloom's Taxonomy, which would fall under Stage 1, backward design keeps the focus on the big picture of identifying the learning goal, and then runs through the entire process of the lesson, guiding the teacher to identify evidence of learner success and plan activities closely tied to the learning goal.