Why Is Lesson Planning in Science Important?

A lesson plan to a teacher is like a play book for a coach.  A coach is the most successful when they teach their team strategies for tackling an opposition before every game. It is the same case when a teacher is teaching a lesson and introducing a new activity to the class.  If the teacher came in with no game plan or clear focus, then the students would not have a successful learning experience.  A lesson plan starts out with stating the frameworks that will be covered.  This allows the teacher to know the content he/she is introducing to the class is age appropriate and valid.  Next the key questions are stated.  Having key questions is essential in creating a focused lesson plan.  The question should be shared with the students at the beginning of the lesson, so they know what they are going to be learning; then the question should also be restated at the end of the lesson, so the teacher can assess if the students grasped what he/she was teaching.  The learning objectives of the lesson plan also helps teachers keep their lessons focused.  They spell out what the students should be able to do by the end of the lesson.  Another component of lesson plans is prerequisite skills, concepts, and academic language needed for the learning activity.  Using the coach to playbook analogy again, this portion of the lesson plan would be like a coach scouting the other team.  A coach needs to know what skills their team have mastered and need work on before entering a game.  A teacher, needs to analyze what his/her students already know, and what they need to know before entering a lesson.  A lesson will not be successful if students do not have any background knowledge of the content being introduced in the activity; like a team would not be successful if they did not know the skill level of the opposing team before entering a game. A lesson plan also includes a material list; this helps remind teachers what they need to have on hand in order to implement their lesson.  Without having the correct materials, an activity might not be able to be done, especially in science where a lot of experiments are conducted.  Safety considerations are the next important part of a lesson plan.  It is useful for teachers to have a written reminder of the safety protocol, so they can ensure there are no injuries to themselves or their students. Next is the bulk of the lesson plan.  It is important for teachers to have a beginning, middle, and an end to their lesson.  The procedure part of the lesson is a helpful guide for teachers to keep the lesson on track.  It explains how the lesson should run and the amount of time each task will take.  If a lesson is carefully planned out and organized, then it will run smoothly and students' time spent on learning will be maximized.  The last part of a lesson plan is writing out assessment tools.  Assessments are crucial for teachers to not only discover what their students grasped for content, but whether their lesson needed revamping or not.  Back to my earlier analogy, a coach can only improve his/her team's success if he/she recognizes the mistakes made during the game, and then address them the next day in practice. Like players, students need instructions repeated in order for the meaning to sink in.  A lesson plan does not guarantee a successful lesson, like a play book does not guarantee a win, but what a lesson plan does do is it better prepares a teacher and minimizes the chances of a lesson turning into a disaster.