Lesson Plans

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PREPARED

The one element of being an Explorations leader that cannot be overemphasized is preparation.

What do we mean by preparation?

When you walk into class to teach, the more you have everything laid out in advance — the more organized you are — the better the class will be.

Conversely, if you go into class without a solid plan and try to wing it, sooner or later the time will come when the class falls apart. Few things feel worse. It’s like a bad dream where, in front of your family and friends, you are exposed as a fraud.

USING THE LESSON PLAN

The “lesson plan” is a common-sense organizing tool for getting prepared. With it you detail what you want to accomplish in a given class, how you’re going to do it, and who’s responsible for the various things you want to do.

Put simply, a lesson plan is a way for you to take the 2.5 hours of class time you have every week and chop it up into manageable chunks.

The sample lesson plan that follows on the next page will provide you with a time-tested model for constructing your own lesson plans. It includes:

The key questions you want to consider that week

A brief “agenda” that captures at a glance

how you’ve broken down the class time into discrete activitiesthe ways these activities connect to one another

A timeline that gives you…

• • • a detailed description of each activity
    • how much time you’ve allocated for each activity
    • who’s responsible for each activity
    • what you need to do each activity (e.g., AV, or a flip chart, or cameras)

Time at the beginning of class to go over any “business,” e.g., important dates on the academic calendar, upcoming events, or opportunities for students.

Time to talk about how your students’ week has gone – good and bad. This is an important part of both programs. It puts into practice our mission to provide your students with a sense of support and community.

A break when your students can, quite literally, get up and stretch, socialize, and ask you questions.

Time at the end of class for reminders about assignments and what’s happening next week in class.

PLANNING FOR THE NEXT CLASS

A major portion of your planning must take into account what actually goes on in class from week to week.

You need to be flexible, to be able to adjust your thinking in terms of what has happened in previous classes — a good deal of which, positive and negative, is hard to anticipate, even for experienced teachers.

Try to set up regular times each week. Fro some people this is the next day. For others nearer to the next class. 

See the Sample Lesson Plan