Lesson Plan Preparation You Need

Lesson Plan Preparation

You need to learn to walk before you can crawl. Any mother appreciates this essential truth of childhood physical development. A teacher must be similarly respectful of student developmental needs in her lesson plan design, else students become frustrated and alienated with school at a young age, simply because they are required to do something they are not cognitively or developmentally capable of, just yet, are were physically unable to perform -- without appropriate assistance.

A teacher might be teaching a fifth grade class that is cognitively normal, even gifted. But she may need because of past curriculum deficits of other teachers, to reinforce certain basic skills during a reading lesson, if she judges this area of instruction to be lacking from past grades -- by asking students to verbally diagram sentences in a fun way, such as pointing out the "doing" verb words or the "people, place and thing" noun words, this early skills-appropriate instruction can be reinforced for the older class while still moving the children forward in their education. A good teacher must also remember Piaget's stages of development, and not use science experiments that make extensive use of concepts such as volume and proportion, before students are cognitively capable of understanding these concepts around seven or eight, although even the youngest of children can appreciate the scientific beauty and importance seasons and the different things animals eat in contrast to people. (Piaget, 1970)

Physical disabilities might make it difficult for certain students to sit up for long periods of time in classroom seats, or to see or hear certain aspects of the lesson. (Belkin, 2004) Students can still be kinesthetically involved, however -- for instance, asking a blind student how something feels or smells, senses that might be more developed in this child, can give him or her a sense of empowerment. Reading levels may be wide in a mixed classroom of special education and 'regular' students, and students with dyslexia can benefit from the use of talking books with animated voices. Even students with reading difficulties that are not formally diagnosable can grow more enthusiastic about reading by being encouraged to, for instance, cook a recipe that the pilgrims did in a history text, or to cut out pictures from the newspaper about a topic discussed in social studies class. Ultimately, curriculum objectives like students being able to read certain vocabulary cannot be forgotten, but if challenging vocabulary is reinforced throughout the day, and verbally, aurally, and spatially, as well as on the page, this ultimately makes the objectives more feasible and easily realized, in appropriate ways that do not intimidate the students or alienate them from school and the learning process -- which ultimately should be integrated into every facet of their lives, inside and outside of the classroom