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Lesson Plan Template
Streamline lesson planning with an editable Elementary Lesson Plan template. This simple, yet effective template will guide you through the four key elements of an effective lesson.
THE 4 KEY ELEMENTS OF LESSON PLAN
You’ll need these 4 components to create a lesson plan
These four key elements should always be present in an effective elementary lesson plan. We believe the quality of any lesson plan truly matters as it directly affects the teacher’s efficiency in delivering the content. It also affects how deeply the students will learn the content. Teachers can greatly improve their lesson planning skills by targeting these four key elements.
1. Lesson Objective or Learning Target
First, it is important to ask- What is the goal of this specific lesson? Consider what students will know and be able to do by the end of the lesson. When planning a lesson, write down the goal as the lesson objective or learning target in student-friendly terminology. Then be sure to share the objective or target with students at the beginning of the lesson and refer back to it throughout the lesson.
2. Anticipatory Set
How will you set the stage for the learning that will occur? The anticipatory set, sometimes referred to as the lesson hook, is a short activity aligned with the lesson objective that captures students’ interest or primes their brains to recall prior knowledge related to the lesson.
3. Gradual Release of Responsibility
How will you provide appropriately scaffolded instruction that guides students toward independence and mastery of the skill or content? One easy way we like to encompass this gradual release is through the “I Do, We Do, You Do” model.
I Do- ‘Direct Instruction’
In this portion of the lesson, the teacher models and provides direct instruction for the students. The teacher explicitly explains what students need to know, showing them exactly how to do whatever is required to successfully obtain the objective or learning target.
We Do- ‘Scaffolded Student Practice’
This is a crucial step in the lesson and should not be skipped! The teacher and students practice the steps, tasks or skills together. During this time, the teacher gradually releases more and more responsibility for learning to the students. The teacher also provides feedback along the way that directs students to refer back to the objective or learning target.
You Do- ‘Demonstration of Learning’
In this portion of the lesson, students perform the steps, task or skill independently to demonstrate their level of mastery towards the lesson objective or learning target. The teacher monitors mastery, checks for understanding, and continues to offer feedback to students.
4. Closure
Don’t leave a lesson hanging! Consider how you will bring closure to the lesson. How will you wrap up the lesson so students are given a chance to revisit the learning target or lesson objective, consolidate learning, and/or make meaning of the work they have just encountered? The students are the ones doing this thinking while the teacher takes on a facilitative role. The lesson closure also provides a good opportunity to collect formative assessment data that informs the teacher in making instructional decisions about upcoming lessons.
How to Select Activities for a Lesson Plan
So, how do you select activities for your lesson plan?
There are six simple questions to ask yourself as you plan engaging activities to include in your lesson plans. If you are new to lesson planning, you will want to refer to this guide and ask yourself all six questions frequently. However, as you become more comfortable with lesson planning, the process will become more automatic.To Successfully Select Activities for a Lesson Plan, ask yourself:
- What are my learning objectives or learning targets?
- What will be relevant for my students? What are their academic, emotional and personal needs? What are their learning styles?
- How much time will I have? Will I include multiple activities or just one?
- How will I group my students? Will my students work independently, in small groups, or as a whole group? Will I group homogeneously or heterogeneously?
- What cross curricular connections can be made? Can I tie in other learning objectives or skills by the type of activities I choose?
- What technology will be incorporated?
8 Tips for Easy AN Lesson Plan
8 TIPS FOR AN EASY LESSON PLAN
Here are 8 top tips to write simple and easy lesson plans. Lesson planning can save precious time and energy… possibly even giving teachers their nights and weekends back!- Work backwards. Plan with the end in mind. If you find yourself planning day-to-day, make an initial investment of time upfront to create pacing guides or unit overviews that include desired student outcomes. Then use those guides as a reference to bring focus to your lesson planning sessions.
- Don’t start from scratch. Utilize available content. There is no need to recreate the wheel for every lesson. Use the resources that are already available to you. Strategically choose the best instructional strategies and resources from provided curricular materials. Also take advantage of access to great digital content like videos, webquests, OER materials, virtual field trips, etc.
- Be reflective. Use what has worked before. For any lessons or topics you’ve had a chance to teach previously, be reflective on what worked and what didn’t. Keep the lesson elements and instructional strategies that were most impactful for students and tweak the rest.
- Build structure. Set instructional routines. Put a few key instructional routines in place at the beginning of the year that maintain high expectations for student learning, and ones which you can plan to use over and over again. When it’s time to plan a lesson, simply choose a routine and insert the lesson content. Examples of effective instructional routines: partner talk, graphic organizers or guided notes, written response, interactive notebooks, collaborative grouping, learning stations, etc.
- Join forces. Collaborate with colleagues. If you find that your grade level team will be teaching the same lesson, it might be worthwhile to divide and conquer in the planning. Take turns creating the lesson materials, copies, differentiation strategies, instructional slides, etc. to share amongst your colleagues.
- Draw the line. Keep it Simple. The internet provides access to millions of lesson ideas for any given topic, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend hours sifting through it all. Over-the-top elaboration isn’t necessary to make lessons meaningful. In fact, that kind of fun can actually distract students from the type of cognitive engagement you are hoping for. Instead, use a lesson format that works for you and use it often. When lesson planning, limit the amount of time you will allow yourself to spend searching the internet.
- Take stock. Gather timely data. Gather relevant data through ongoing formative assessments to better understand student performance and mastery. Because the data is timely, it is important not to plan too far ahead. Use the current data to inform instructional decisions about subsequent lessons and focus your planning on the steps needed to move students closer to the goal.
- Have a plan. Don’t overplan. Include a few relevant ‘fast finisher’ activities to accompany each lesson so you will feel prepared. But, don’t waste time overplanning. Recognize that spontaneity is an important teaching tool too. Accept the fact that there are many paths to reach a single goal. Be willing to change directions as you adjust to the needs of your students in the moment.
Strategies to help students engage through discussion and doing the Work
Are you tired of your same old lesson plans? Do you feel like you are in a rut? If so, it’s likely your students are bored and disengaged as well. The more engaged students are in the lesson, the more likely they will learn the information and follow classroom expectations. Engaged students show up excited to learn, eager to participate, and ready to demonstrate a positive attitude towards learning.1. Encourage Students Do the Work Skills.
Research shows that students whose teachers spend too much time talking are less likely to be engaged during classroom instruction. The most engaging lessons involve less teacher talk and more student talk. As you plan for your lessons, ask yourself, “Who is doing most of the work?”2. Help Students Master Speaking and Listening Skills.
Before you are ready to incorporate more student talk into your lessons, familiarize yourself with the most overlooked learning standards- Speaking and Listening. Students need to be explicitly taught these speaking and listening skills. They need time to practice and receive feedback to become productive members of conversation. Learn the standards and find ways to incorporate them into your lessons and daily classroom schedule.3. Require ALL Students to Respond
Increasing the number of students’ opportunities to respond is essential to increasing student engagement. An opportunity to respond is when a teacher provides an academic opportunity that requires students to actively respond. There are simple strategies that you can incorporate into your instruction immediately.- Simultaneous Response- Students respond chorally, or with response cards
- Group Response- Students participate in small group cooperative grouping strategies such as jigsaw, socratic seminar, or numbered heads together
- Written Response- students respond with mini white boards or paper
- Action Response- students respond with hand signals, facial expressions, or gestures.
Ideas for to keep your students’ attention and engaged
1. Start with a focus activity
Add excitement and wonder to the lesson with a fun focus activity. This will strike students’ curiosity and increase engagement for the upcoming topic.2. Get students moving
There are lots of ways to get students up and moving while learning. One idea to get students moving is to have students move to different corners of the room during a discussion. Label each corner of the room with the words like “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” and “strongly disagree.” Then prompt students to use their speaking and listening standards while talking with the other students in their corner about why they chose that option.3. Create learning stations
Allowing students to guide themselves through learning stations is another way to mix up your lesson plans. Each station can incorporate a piece of what the teacher normally would explicitly teach standing in front of the class. For example; one station might have an engaging video and another has a text to read. The third might be a photograph or a labeled diagram about the topic. Students visit all of the stations and then come back as a whole class to discuss what they learned while visiting the stations.4. Incorporate technology
Kids love technology. When it is used in the classroom students are immediately more engaged and inspired to learn. Make sure technology enhances your lesson, instead of distracting from the content.5. Inquiry-based learning
Inquiry-based learning allows students to focus on an open question or problem. This is engaging because there is not just one correct answer to the question. Students will use evidence-based reasoning and creative problem-solving to come to a solution. This gets them thinking critically, building investigations, reaching conclusions, and presenting their findings. Above all, let students DO the work. Prior to planning an engaging lesson consider your classroom management. Classroom management strategies help you build a structured environment where students can be successful. Keep in mind that even the most engaging lessons don’t go as planned. Remember to stay flexible and always do what is best for your students.
Meet Your Core Standards With Read Aloud Lesson Plans
Read Aloud Lesson Plans to Meet Your Core Standards
Are you wondering what to include in a read aloud lesson plan? There’s so much that can be included that it might seem overwhelming. Interactive Read-alouds should include text dependent questions, standards-based graphic organizers, and response to text writing activities that meet the standards.3-Day Lesson Plan Template to Meet the Standards
By spanning read-aloud lessons across three days, teachers have time to incorporate all the necessary components while also conquering the standards. Before beginning to plan a read aloud lesson, you will need to select a story that is complex enough to revisit over three days. During the 3-day span, you will read the book for a different purpose each day. Using your read-aloud time to infuse core standards will help you read with a purpose. Most standards are met by asking text dependent questions. You can also incorporate speaking and listening strategies while questioning by having the students discuss the questions with partners. You can learn more about other discussion strategies and accountable talk in the classroom here. Here are some effective ways to meet core standards during read-aloud lessons:- Extend the read-aloud over a few days to allow time to comprehend the story more deeply and cover multiple standards
- Read closely by revisiting the text with a different purpose each day
- Ask text dependent questions that require students to refer to the text and provide textual evidence to support their answers
- Include a graphic organizer that reinforces the purpose
- Incorporate a writing component
- Integrate art
What are text dependent questions?
Simply said, text dependent questions are those which can only be answered using evidence from the text. These types of questions are critical in a read-aloud lesson because they require students to read and reread the text in order to answer the question successfully. To write text dependent questions, you need to consult your ELA comprehension standards. We typically refer to the Common Core ELA Literature and Informational Text standards and use question stems that target standards from each section (Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas). Text dependent questions should be asked over the course of three days. Questions for the first lesson will focus on key ideas and details from the story. Focus on the craft and structure for the second lesson and the final lesson will focus on integration of knowledge and ideas. You can learn more about how we use text dependent questions here.Completing Standard Based Graphic Organizers
For each day of the read aloud lesson, students complete a graphic organizer after the focused discussion on text dependent questions. The graphic organizer should cover the same standards as the text dependent questions on each day. For the first lesson graphic organizers should help students focus on key ideas and details of the text, craft and structure is the focus for the second lesson, and graphic organizers that target integration of knowledge and ideas are used during the final lesson.Wrapping it up with Writing
On the final day of a read aloud lesson, assign a response to text writing activity. This activity should incorporate writing standards in a meaningful way as students are asked to synthesize their learning over the span of the lessons. We believe a strong classroom community starts the foundation for learning. We are passionate about helping teachers build a positive environment where students thrive. You can find helpful, popular classroom community resources here. We also believe students are capable of doing hard things with perseverance and a growth mindset. We create rigorous lessons for kids that are carefully scaffolded. We provide teachers helpful, detailed instructions and examples of how to execute all of our lessons with students. You can find in-depth read-aloud lessons and paired text lessons here. We believe digital resources are absolutely essential for today’s students. We are currently working hard to meet the demand for technology in the classroom. We have combined our expertise in literacy and technology to create digital lesson plans. Check out our most popular resource line Digital Learning Quests.
3 FUNDAMENTALS OF Elementary DISTANCE LEARNING
The fundamentals of Distance Learning
There are three fundamental elements to consider when providing effective distance learning instruction. While these fundamentals are also used during in-person lesson planning, the execution will look different for digital learning.
When creating lesson plans specifically designed for distance learning, it is important to keep these elements and instructional practices in mind. Let’s examine how these key components and related instructional ideas apply to distance learning in elementary classrooms.
MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS
Purposely plan moments to make meaningful connections between teacher and students and between student to student as classroom peers.
- A teacher’s online presence sets the stage for meaningful connections. Be easily accessible to your students by offering a ‘contact me’ button on your LMS. Plan for and advertise regularly scheduled conferencing or office hours.
- Be responsive and timely in interactions with and feedback to students. Use digital tools to reach students. Send emails, schedule video conferencing, and provide a system to provide ongoing feedback through writing or by recording audio/video comments for students.
- Synchronous face-to-face interactions also provide prime opportunities to make strong connections. During synchronous learning, plan to have frequent personal interactions with students including calling them by name whenever possible.
- Hold regular digital class meetings to build classroom communities with students. Plan for peers to make meaningful connections with each other through digital collaboration activities and assignments. The daily digital activities work well such as Digital Calendar Math
QUALITY INSTRUCTION
As teachers have grappled with the best ways to deliver quality instruction through distance learning, three styles of digital instruction have emerged as highly effective- synchronous, asynchronous, and semi-synchronous. Utilize all three styles of learning delivery methods to provide quality instruction that offers variety and flexibility for students.
- Provide instruction through synchronous learning methods when the lesson is best delivered as students and the teacher attend the same virtual space at the same time.
- Use asynchronous instructional methods as an advantage to provide flexibility and self-paced learning for lessons that do not require real-time interaction.
- Plan for intentional semi-synchronous learning opportunities as students are guided through a digital session that includes a back-and-forth transition between synchronous and asynchronous instructional styles. Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion suggests an example of semi-synchronous learning when a lesson begins with synchronous instruction that shifts into an independent working time for students who stay logged into the meeting so they can still access their teacher and ask questions in real time.
CONSISTENT INSTRUCTION
- Engage students in the lesson through the use of guided notes, kinesthetic signals, poll features, chat questions, or other activities for students to show they are attending to the learning. Get inspiration from our 1st Grade Distance Learning Activities
- Regardless of the lesson delivery style, be intentional that instruction is given prior to posting an assignment. Provide only worthwhile assignments and activities for distance learning, never busy work. Assignments should help students practice new skills and apply learning in meaningful ways. Looking for inspiration? See Digital Literacy Centers
- Post assignments with clear explanations and expectations and which include ways to seek support for students who may need additional help.
- As appropriate for the lesson or assignment, give students more ownership over their learning by allowing them to self-assess their own work against a rubric or checklist. You could our Digital Formative Assessment or Digital Data Folders for Students
- Include opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of a skill through quizzes, written responses, self-guided learning assignments, interactive pages, etc. You may consider Digital Sight Word Activities or Digital Lifecycles
- For each lesson or assignment, require a permanent product from students. This could be as simple as writing a brief response in a chat window, submitting a screenshot, recording an audio response, completing an exit ticket, etc.
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