Eenie Meenie Minie Moe...

...Catch a lesson plan by the toe.

I feel like that's all I've been doing this week! I think it is safe to say that those of us in Social Studies Methods have been exposed to many different, new ways of teaching and delivering content. For myself, the biggest change in my pedagogical practice has been the lesson and learning planning formats we use! Taking a step back from planning for students and actually planning for myself has been a change, and I think I can speak for many of us when I say we are still getting used to it.

The main differences between a lesson plan and a learning plan are pretty simple.

In a lesson plan, many people can master the task of how you are going to fill the students' 25 minutes to cover a standard. You glean all of your resources with the intent to find ways to deliver that particular standard, and to find activities that accompany the standard. You might even do a Pinterest search to get creative.

In a learning plan, you are mapping out exactly what the students will be able to learn from both the standard and your content delivery. It is a much more in depth process, and it forces you to think about how your lesson will challenge your students. For instance, you might ask yourself questions such as, "How will I hook my students" and "How can I get students to connect the hook to the content?". This is a bit more than your standard 6 Point.

Is one plan better than the other? It depends on the needs of your classroom. I have been able to work on a learning plan first hand this semester; usually, I am accustomed to using 6 point. After going through the process, I can see pros and cons from both plans.

For instance, the 6 point template is very clean cut and simple. This is good in that it allows teachers to create a concise plan of what the classroom will look like, While working within the learning plan, I found myself getting lost in what my original objectives were. To be quite honest, I had to do a lot of backtracking quite a few times in order to stay true to my objectives.  But on the bright side, the learning plan allows for teachers to write in more detail and specifics to what will be going on.

Overall, I think that the learning plan is good for professional development. Requiring yourself to write down the extra details will eventually lead to the higher level of thinking becoming commonplace. I think that is the best way I have been able to look at all of the extra detail, and rightly so! This can be backed up with NCTCS 2d- Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs. By elaborating in your plans, you are pretty much accommodating for all of your students' needs.

I hope to grow enough as a professional educator to create a lesson plan format of my own; one that fits the needs of my students first. I appreciate the experiences I have gained in writing these lessons and plan to use them when I begin writing in my classroom. I think it will be a trial by error process, and that is a good thing!