Assessing Educational Lesson Plan

¶ … lesson plan that was created actually accomplished what it set out to accomplish. In other words, are the students gaining expertise in recognizing new words, and are they able to use those new words to enhance their reading abilities? In order to determine the answer(s) to the above question a collaborative approach between the researcher and the teacher would be the best approach to follow, or at least the approach chosen by this researcher as the most appropriate one. That approach is a complementary methodology that can be used with the experiential approach that the researcher would also use. Designing an action research case study to determine improvements in reading levels would necessarily integrate both the collaborative efforts of the researcher as well as the experiential efforts put forth.

A study (Brevetti, 2014) recently determined that new teachers "have few opportunities to navigate the complexities of becoming skilled in areas of expertise that are essential to a classroom environment" (p. 32). One method for navigating those complexities is through using collaborative methods with teachers that have already been there, and experienced that; teachers that have already experienced fulfilling the tasks that Brevetti states all teachers are expected to fulfill; such as keeping a safe classroom environment that allows learning, creating lesson plans that are meaningful and engage the students, implementing activities and events that will enhance the learning process, grading all test, papers and homework in a fair manner, and providing all the students with proficient and helpful feedback (Brevetti, 2014). Many teachers and experts seem to think that collaborative teaching assists not only the students, but helps teachers learn as well.

One study warns however that teachers and students both must be diligent when working in collaborative environments; the study (Sarah, Yu-Ju, Cloudia, 2014) determined that collaborative learning had developed an emphasis on co-constructing knowledge and had done so by sharing the meaning of problem-solving activities, but warned that such co-construction cannot be accomplished "without governing the self-regulatory processes of students" (p. 405). Implementing a collaborative approach would seem to take into consideration much more than just sharing knowledge, it must also take into account how the students learn, how they self-regulate themselves and in what type of environment will the collaborative approach work best.

While collaborating on teaching and in learning environments seems to work well, especially if everyone is on the same page, experiential learning is often regarded as an "effective approach to assisting learning as it facilitates learners to transform experiences into knowledge" (Shieh, Wheijen, 2014, p. 650). Experimenting in a language classroom can take any number of forms; creatively using word definitions and meanings that are new to the students is one prime example of such experiential learning and teaching. Of course, experiential learning and collaborative learning are both tried and true methods of teaching and learning, but ensuring that the classroom environment is conducive to student learning (and teaching) may not be as easy as one would think. Oftentimes, creating or reforming a classroom is much more difficult than creating a new lesson plan. A recent study (Madsen, Schroeder, Irby, 2014) defined educational reform as the outcome desired by both social and political forces who were seeking improvements in schools in an effort to increase learning for all students regardless of their race, ethnicity or income levels.

While that sounds fine and dandy on paper, implementing the classroom lesson plan that meets those laudable, yet lofty, goals, can be difficult especially for newly trained teachers. Collaborating with other teachers, and experimenting in the classroom to determine what works and what does not are a two methods for accomplishing the goals and objectives of the lesson plan.

Design model

In this particular case, the design model (action research) works well because it allows the researcher to gather data, analyze the data and then change what needs to be changed within the assessment. Action research is particularly effective in an educational environment since it allows both the ongoing gathering of data and almost immediate changes to any curriculum or program based on results of studying that data. It would seem, therefore, that establishing a baseline, creating a lesson plan that considers the baseline, assessing the students in order to gather additional data, and then making any necessary changes to the lesson plan is the best method for accomplishing what the researcher wishes to accomplish. Additionally, not only do the students show improvement in their reading capabilities, but such an approach also benefits the teacher in that he/she learns as well.