Looking Back At The Lesson Plan

     What are lesson plans and why do we need it in school? Ever since I was little, I was introduced to lesson planning and how essential it is moving forward. My mother was a teacher, but not for grade schools. She worked at a catholic school daycare for half of my life and she, too, had to do lesson plans every single day. A lesson plan can be defined, to me, as a guide to what is expected to be done in the classroom that day. According to Mohammed Rhalmi, "It provides, however, a guide to managing the environment and the learning process." It's importance is key so that the classroom and goals in the classroom do not get overlooked.
     This past assignment tasked us at making a lesson plan about the nutritional facts label on cereal boxes. We, as future educators, were to revolve the lesson plan around three main contents of the labels: sugar, salt, and fat. From there, we could do anything we desired. It turned out to be a successful one and I carried it out well. Now that I learned how to make a good lesson plan, I am now tasked at applying my knowledge. So I started thinking at what could have been done differently from the lesson plan I made. I realised that there is always room for improvements so I tried to think of a better way for my previous plan. One of the few things I saw that I would include is timing. I felt like I could have put more time on training the students about what they are going to do. The initial lesson plan rushed straight in. The last thing I would change is the difficulty of the lesson plan. It was very easily achievable. I gave no challenge to students dealing with their graphs. My standards felt like they just had to complete it and they would get a good grade. A way to challenge students would be to grade harder on their graphs. I would set a strict criteria on how the graph should all look and I would make them do more calculations with the statistics then input the data. That would challenge them to learn a new concept and apply it to a new lesson.
     Of course, technology would also have made this lesson plan better. As you can see, I avoided the use of technology on the student's side. I do not have a logical explanation on why I chose to do it but I decided to do it the old fashioned way and let students use only paper and pencils. The improvements of the lesson plan would see students be able to use a laptop in their group to guide them through and help them if they ever need to know more about what they are learning. They would be able to find resources that would build their bar graphs for them. The possibilities are endless as long as they use the resources correctly. That would be up to me as the teacher to enforce safety with them most definitely. Technology in education should not be one sided. Students should also be able to take advantage of it's perks and the updated lesson plan will include that.
     So what is next? Another day means another lesson plan to make. What is another activity that I would teach my students that relates to what they recently did? The next lesson I would teach is to learn about the types of containers food is used in and to determine if it is recyclable. The reason for this is because it is important for students to learn about how beneficial recycling is for the environment. Considering this is a science class, it falls right under the material. How could you tell if something is recyclable? According to Erika Sanders, "The universal recycling symbol of three arrows chasing one another in a triangle indicates that a product's packaging is both recyclable and made of recycled material." That is exactly what I would teach my students. With this valuable knowledge, they are influenced with the thought of recycling and in the future, lessons about topics like the greenhouse effect and global warming will all be familiar. 
     Learning about lesson plans was a great experience. It was a more beneficial experience creating them. This opportunity gave me time to feel like an educator while I was making it. I was working and thinking like a teacher who wants the best for their students. With the knowledge I have now, I am able to revise a previous lesson plan AND create even better ones that will open more doors to ideas in the future. It was an experience that I hold dear to me.

WORKS CITED

Rhalmi, M. (2010, February 20). The Main Reasons For Lesson Plans. My English Pages. Retrieved November 3rd, 2015, from http://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/the-main-reasons-for-lesson-plans/

Sanders, E. (n.d.) How To Know if Something Can Be Recycled. SF Gate. Retrieved November 3rd, 2015, from http://homeguides.sfgate.com/something-can-recycled-79291.html