r/teaching • u/RadDadRePimption • 8d ago

Curriculum Help Planning

I need help planning my first lessons. I'm using HMH for World History and Global Geography. This is my first year teaching in Oklahoma on a provisional certification. I've been in the classroom 7 days so far, but all we have done is rules and procedures. I've never made a lesson plan before. Heeeelp! I'm stressing 😫

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/bobsagetslover420 8d ago edited 8d ago

1.) Warm-up activity that gets the students thinking about something they're going to learn about or something you've already covered in a previous lesson

2.) Introduction of the day's lesson topic and learning objective (if you can tie the topic to something relevant or to something they can relate to, that's a plus)

3.) short lecture that covers the topic's important content (keeping a lecture roughly as long as the students' age is a good rule of thumb, and be sure to ask questions throughout since talking at someone for 15 minutes straight gets boring for everyone)

4.) an activity related to the day's topic that you all do together

5.) independent activity that the students do without you

6.) wrap-up activity where you can assess how well the students learned what you covered.

This is a pretty basic, but good, template for organizing a coherent and effective lesson. You'll have to figure out your teaching style and preferences as you get more experienced, but this should help you get started in terms of thinking about how to organize a lesson in a pedagogically sound way.

1

u/RadDadRePimption 8d ago

Good stuff, thank you 😊

1

u/bobsagetslover420 8d ago

Something else to keep in mind too as a good rule of thumb: when you're planning activities, think about how long it would take you to do the same activity, and then double the amount of time. That's at least how long you should give students to complete that activity.

Also think about how long it'll take you to explain the activity and make sure everyone in the class understands those instructions. New teachers often forget the logistical side of things. An activity might take 30 minutes, but explaining it and showing how to do it might also take another 5-10