Part 1: Lesson Plans vs. Lessons

Does your school principal require you to submit lesson plans for the coming week?
Even if she doesn’t, you know that you still have to do lesson prep for each day’s class. So what’s the difference between a lesson plan and the actual lesson?

The lesson plan is the teacher’s thought process about what will happen in a certain class period — sort of goals or an outline of what and how learning will take place. The lesson, on the other hand, is the actual interaction with the students in the classroom. This is a dynamic process that requires flexibility and does not always follow the lesson plan.

Lesson plans range from simple to complex.

 Simple To-Do List:

• warm-ups
• read orally and discuss a certain text
• do worksheet

Detailed Plan:

• intro to content
• vocab practice
• recall past lesson
• demonstrate skill
• materials needed
• questions to ask
• skill practice
• homework
• assess

A case can be made that a more thorough lesson plan will lead to a more effective lesson. This is mainly because the teacher will have thought more intensely about what to present and how to present it. However, the bottom line is that most teachers don’t have time to do such a thorough lesson plan.

Enter educeri! Using educeri lessons not only saves prep time for what to present but also provides guidance for how to present it. Teachers save time, get quality content, and gain proven strategies for delivering with great interaction!   We call them educeri lessons, but each lesson is actually both a lesson plan and a lesson guide.

Educeri as a Lesson Plan: All the components of a good lesson are built-in for each educeri lesson:

• Learning Objective (aligned to standards)
• Activate Prior Knowledge
• Concept Development
• Skill Development/Guided Practice
• Relevance
• Closure
• Independent Practice

This built-in content ensures your lesson plan is on target for standards, concepts, and sequential development of learning.

Educeri as a Lesson Guide: The big thing is that educeri lessons also help you with the dynamic lesson interaction. Each lesson also provides:

• Academic vocabulary
• Examples for “working the page” to easily explain concepts
• Higher-order checking for understanding questions
• Rule of Two for demonstrating or modeling skills
• Recommendations for using the 8 Engagement Norms to maximize interaction during the lesson (as much as every two minutes)

With this preparation done for you, you can now use your own unique style to deliver the lesson most effectively and focus directly on meeting the needs of the students. You are freed from the drudgery of content prep and can now go deeply into adjusting the lesson for remedial, advanced, or EL students. See Part 2 of 3 articles on Lesson Planning Mastery.