In planning a lesson, we suggest that you use a lesson plan format. Although lesson plan formats vary somewhat, we have found the format below useful for science teachers. Think of a lesson plan as a road map. You won’t plan a trip to an unknown region without consulting a map and a plan. Similarly, you shouldn’t attempt to help students learn a difficult concept without a constructing a lesson plan.

Structure Of A Lesson Plan

• Learning objectives: (What do you hope to accomplish in the lesson? What concepts or inquiry skills will students develop? Will students develop background experiences for the project? Make sure you specify the understanding performance you want students to be able to demonstrate.)
• Relationship to the driving question: (How is the lesson related to the driving question of the project?)
• Materials needed: (What materials will you or the students need?)
• Instructional strategies: (What strategies or learning activities will you use to help students reach the learning objectives? Demonstration? Discussion? etc.?)
• Time required: (Estimate the amount of time it will take for you to complete the benchmark lesson.)
• Instructional sequence: (How will you proceed through this lesson?)
  • Introducing the lesson: (How will you introduce the lesson to the students? How will you motivate and capture students’ attention? How will find out about students’ prior knowledge?)
  • Representing the content: (How are you representing the content students will learn? What explanations or learning activities are you using? How will you connect the ideas to students’ prior knowledge?)
  • Establish links to the driving question: (How is the activity related to the driving question? How will you point out to students how what they are learning is related to the driving question of the project?)
  • Evaluating learning: (How will you determine if students met the learning objectives? What is the relationship between this benchmark lesson and student products or artifacts?)
• Cautions: (Are there any dangerous or hazardous components of the activities associated with the lesson? What precautions need to be taken?)

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