Anatomy of a Lesson

I love to be organized!  In a perfect world, I would always have everything students need for an entire lesson all together.  Two pages, two-sided, stapled, and hole punched.  I am just a little OCD that way.

I keep the copies right by the door. Students know to pick it up when they walk in the room.

I had to slip in a pic of our new school.  Beautiful, no?

Here's what one of those pages looks like, and a breakdown of its parts. 

1.     Unit # and Day # -- This helps students keep everything in the right order in their binders.

2.     Bell Work – I have tried to use Harry Wong’s strategies for starting class.  “I don’t start class, YOU start class”, but my students don’t always jump right in and start without me like I wish that they would.  What has worked best is to play music between classes – when the song ends they are supposed to end their conversations and get started on the bell work.

3.     Notes – Here’s the lecture notes with blanks or whatever type of progression I have planned for that day.  On this day, it is simply a couple of examples for them to follow along as I explain them.

4.     Practice Problems – I try to structure every day so that students have time to practice before they leave the room.  Some days they might do all the practice in class with no homework, but usually there is some in class and some to finish at home.

5.     Answers – These are the answers (in no particular order) to the practice problems on that page.  I do this because I think it is really important for students to be able to self-check and make corrections.  I teach them to work the problem, and then look for the answer and cross it out.  If it isn’t there, they need to find their mistake and fix it.  Steps are required to be shown for credit.  I spend a lot of time teaching them how to use the answers for good and not for evil, but that’s for another day . . . 

6.     More Notes – Whenever possible, I like to break my lessons up into small pieces.  I talk . . . they practice . . . I talk some more . . . more practice.

7.     More Practice.

8.     One Lonely “Application” Problem – When it comes to showing them how this stuff is used in real life, I have much room for improvement.

9.     Review – Most days include some review problems, some more than others.

One of my goals for this year was to incorporate more variety of practice structures and partner-type activities.  But I still try to use this format no matter what.  I want them to have something they can keep as a record of what they learned and/or practiced that day.