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When my niece first began driving, she said that every time she drove in a new area it was like
filling in a section of the map in her mind. She could hop from one section of the map to the next
because she knew how they were connected. This is how teachers can think about planning
lessons. They need to be organized and meaningful in their plans and offer the students
something relevant and connected. It is essential to help them connect to prior knowledge as well
as future action.
Surface learning is where teachers start with an idea or skill, but “Deeper learning activities
require learners to draw information from knowledge they have acquired and then do something
meaningful with it”[ CITATION Dee13 \l 1033 ] in order to drive that learning deeper teachers have
to connect it to both prior knowledge and actions. These connections, once made, also drive
engagement. Lessons are rarely engaging because they are fun, but when students can take an
active part in the learning, with group work and self-expression during well-connected lessons
the students are engaged and motivated. This is a chance to connect the students life experiences,
music, jokes, pop culture and social concerns they are surrounded by and show them how the
things they are fans of have come and show them how they are progressing forward.
Brown 2
When planning for instruction it is important to plan for assessment and understanding. This is
easily built in during planning by including content and language objectives and by modeling the
objectives during explicit instruction such as I do, we do, you do structures. This helps formulate
how the students will engage in the content for the lesson. These structured lesson frames
promote the use of structures and frames for breaking down or building more complex texts for
the students. Charts, graphic organizers, an explicit instruction on annotations will help students
gain access to the disciplinary literacy of the content. These practices keep students from feeling
overwhelmed and lost in the flood of information. It models how the students can organize and
sort information going forward. When organizing information in these ways it can also make
With clear content and language objectives it becomes clear how to make formative assessments
during the lesson. Formative assessment are especially crucial in informing instruction because
“assessment data should be analyzed to gauge what has been fully learned, what is only partially
understood, and where errors and misconceptions stubbornly remain” [ CITATION Fis14 \l 1033 ].
Formative assessments can often be the fun part of a lesson and be helpful in motivating students
One thing to be aware of when planning is the social aspect of the lesson and the environment it
creates in the classroom. Teachers need to keep in mind the differences between in-person and
online environments and “As teachers move online, a critical first step is to create a safe virtual
space that will help students develop their social presence”[ CITATION Tuc20 \l 1033 ]. Group work
Brown 3
is one of the key elements of creating deeper knowledge and group work can be easier to
facilitate in the classroom but must be done with the objectives in mind. Doing group work in an
online environment might be challenging and require entirely different tactics to get students to
participate fully.
Finally, teachers need to take time to “to study their own teaching and the teaching of others”
[ CITATION MOJ15 \l 1033 ] to stay flexible, but also continue to learn from one another about how
teaching looks from the students perspective. When teachers observe other teachers, they can be
inspired or see teaching from a new perspective, which keeps lesson planning fresh and dynamic
References
Deeper Learning Defined. (2013, April). Retrieved Oct. 9, 2020, from William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation: https://hewlett.org/library/deeper-learning-defined/
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Assessments That Highlight Strengths and Challenges. International
Reading Association, 1-11. doi: DOI:10.1598/e-ssentials.8052
MOJE, E. B. (2015, Summer). Doing and Teaching Disciplinary Literacy with Adolescent Learners: A Social
and Cultural Enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254-278.
Tucker, C. R. (2020). Successfully Taking Offline Classes Online. An Educational Leadership Special
Report, 77, 10-14. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/summer20/vol77/num10/Successfully-Taking-Offline-Classes-Online.aspx