Carlos Cortez is in his first year of teaching fifth graders. He has been trying to develop
some imaginative social studies lessons. Several clays ago, lie decided that a simulation
would be just the thing to get his pupils interested and involved.
At the beginning of the social studies period, he said, "Today we're going to do
something different. I'm going to divide you into groups. I want people in each group
to identify the name of an explorer and plan this person's trip to the New World. I want
everyone to make a presentation to the class at the end of the week."
Carlos had barely gotten these words out when members of the class began shouting
out questions:

"What happens if everybody wants to be the same explorer?"

"Do we have to do what the 'real' explorer did, or can we just make stuff up?"

"What if we don't want to be an explorer?"

"Exactly what are we supposed to present to the class?"

"We don't have enough information. When can we go to the library?"

"How come we're doing this, anyway?"

(excerpted from Savage and Armstrong (1995). Effective teaching in elementary social studies. Columbus, OH: Merrill.)
 

Intro to Planning
Every teachers' nightmare, the case study above provides a clear example of why instructional planning is necessary. How fully had Carlos thought through his instructional plan?  What were his goals for students?  How did he plan to facilitate those goals?  What would student success 'look' like?  Why was he teaching this topic?  Would he have been better served if he had asked these questions beforehand? Of course.  As the instructional leader of any class you will be teaching, you will be responsible for designing and implementing instruction for you students. What, exactly, does this responsibility entail?

As you have undoubtedy encountered some form of instructional planning in your other methods or education courses, what follows is simply a cursory overview of the elements I consider to be important elements of  any successful instructional plan. In fact, I believe that the essence of successful instructional planning can be distilled down to answering four key instructional questions. Your plan (whether for a lesson or a unit) is more likely to be complete if you set out to develop answers these four questions.
 

 4 Key Questions in Lesson Planning:
 

Key Question to be Answered	Portion of Lesson Plan that Addresses Question
1. Why are we teaching what we are teaching?	Lesson Rationale
2. What do we want kids to be able to do, say, write, think, feel, act, believe, etc. after the instructional experience has been completed?	Instructional Objectives
3. How will we facilitate the outcomes in #2?	Lesson Introduction/Anticipatory Set   Procedures       •methods,        •materials, room arrangements, resources       •teaching strategies   Lesson Closure
4. How will we know if our kids "got it" or not?	Evaluation, Assessment, Outcome products, etc.

Any complete lesson plan then should include elements that answer all four questions. I would like us to use an Instructional Plan Outline that does just that. I realize that other methods courses may have asked you to use slightly different lesson plan models, but if you look closely, all successful lesson plan models should include similar types of elements. The Instructional Plan Outline may be found here.