Lesson Plan Format (Peer Teaching 3)

1. Title and Identifying Information

At the top of your lesson plan, provide your names and email addresses.

2. Grade Level and Topic

Although you will initially be teaching this lesson to peers, pitch the lesson to the middle school level (grades 6-8), and choose a topic related to the environment. You will be teaching 3-4 "students."

3. National Science Education Standard(s) and Pennsylvania standard(s). 

Identify 1-2 relevant national science education content standards and 1-3 State standards that you will address in your lesson. At least one of your identified standards should concern some aspect of scientific method or inquiry.

4. Instructional Objectives

A brief list of 2-3 things that students should be able to do as a result of this lesson. Bear in mind that this will be a 20-minute lesson.

5.  Content explanation

 

What's your "big idea?" Describe what you need to know, as the teacher, about the content you are teaching. Write a paragraph explaining the key ideas of the lesson. Another science teacher should be able to read this explanation of the ideas and have a good understanding of the science of your lesson.

 

6.  Administrative Considerations

 

Provide details about classroom management and student safety specific to your lesson. Include information about specific instruction strategies aimed at making the knowledge accessible to English learners and students with exceptional needs.

 

 

7. Materials, Equipment, & Set-up

Be very detailed and specific in this section. Material-wise, what will you need to teach this lesson once? Three times back-to-back? (You will do the former when you Peer Teach, and the latter with our middle school visitors). Remember to request materials at least 3 days in advance.

Your lesson should involve computer and/or graphing calculator technology. The use of probes is optional but highly recommended. If you do not use probes, there should be an activity in which students gather some data and analyze it in some fashion using an appropriate technology.

8. Body of the Lesson

a) Engagement: (Approx. time frame)
List the questions you will ask to initially engage your students. What questions will you ask to find out what students already know about your topic? How will you connect what the students already know with the concepts in your lesson?

b) Exploration: (Approx. time frame)
What is your guiding question for the lesson? How will you help students conduct an investigation to answer the guiding question?
 Will there be more than one way to explore the question using the materials provided?
 Be sure that your students make a prediction before collecting data.
 How will students collect data? 
How will students record data?

c) Explanation: (Approx. time frame)
How will you help the students, make sense of the exploration and report what they learn in their own words?

d) Evaluation: (Approx. time frame)
How will you have the students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the ideas under study? Be sure that your evaluation matches your instructional objectives.

e) Elaboration: (Approx. time frame)
If you finish steps a-d early, what extensions will you add to your lesson? You should always overplan, and your elaboration should be more imaginative than, "Discuss..." or "Ask questions about ..."

Please submit a draft lesson plan to your instructor in the Angel dropbox. Label the file "Lastname1-Lastname2 Peer3 draft.doc"

You will have a class meeting to work on planning your lesson and your lesson plan. Please note that you need to request any materials that we need to purchase on that day.

You will peer teach your lesson to a group of 3-4 peers during a future class session. You will teach your lesson once and play the role of a middle school student for two other lessons. The rest of our class meeting time will be devoted to debriefing and giving each other feedback. 

You will subsequently revise your lesson and teach it to visiting middle school students (Teaching Clinic I).