Creating a Patterned Lesson Plan

Introduction

As you prepare to turn a lesson into a electronically mediated learning activity, you can utilize the information about teaching patterns to help you design an effective learning experience.  The steps below should guide you through the basic routine for planning a lesson.  Keep in mind that the level #3 described two weeks ago assumes that you will eventually want to monitor this plan as it is implemented.  This planning phase is just meant to give you a solid foundation for putting together the elements of the lesson into a pattern that will help students do the work they need to do in order to successfully learn the course content.

Step 1

Identify the lesson that you are hoping to transform into an electronically mediated activity.  The lesson should have some clear focus.  That is, it is not enough to say, "I want to discuss pre-Weimar films."  You need to target specific films and what it is you want students to take away from the activity. So, . . .

Step 2

Clarify the goal you have for the lesson.  Write out the goals in a way that allows you to determine the kinds of goals you are primarily interested in.  Are you focusing on content recall, skill building, ability development, or nudging personal growth?  These are the four areas that Grasha describes.  The more you can identify the chief focus, the more certain we can be about the right pattern to choose.

Step 3


Look through the patterns that are listed in week 3.  Try to find one that suits you.  If you don't, there is an abbreviated list with other patterns here.   This step sometimes takes a couple trials.  As you try on different patterns, you will see how they subtly (or dramatically) alter what the lesson can accomplish.

Step 4

Once you decide on an instructional pattern that suits, begin the process of filling it in with you materials.  You may have to adapt your materials and the pattern as you make the fit work.  It will be simpler to keep your first draft a straightforward variation of a standard pattern; however, you are welcome to modify the pattern to make sure it does what you want.

There is another folder in this section that has worksheets for walking through several of these patterns.  You will find if you fill them out horizontally, they are very static forms and not much help.  If, instead, you fill out one column at a time, you will probably find that each column filled in forces a juggling of the prior ones.  Resolving these tensions is what helps us work through the tough choices.

At this stage, you should have a pretty clear sense of the sequence events and information that your students will encounter as they go through the lesson.  You can use your experience as a teacher to assure that the flow of activities is sensible and doable.

Step 5

Now is the time to consider how technology will help you carry the pattern out effectively.  What media will you need to represent concepts?  How will the discussion be handled?  What feedback is needed; when and how will you communicate this to your students?  Notice, that this planning routine delays the technology questions to this point.  It asks "How does technology help me carry out a learning activity that is key to my lesson?"  Since many hardware and software "solutions" have embedded in them limited understanding of the patterns needed.  If we start by asking "How do I use this technology?" we might be leading ourselves into routines that are pedagogical insufficient.  The key to staying in control of the transformation process is ask the technology to solve the pedagogical challenge (rather than the other way around).

Step 6

This is the stage when the details are entered.  What graphic, what discussion board, what web links make up this lesson?  You can visit the web templates to see how we would model four different versions of the same lesson by using different patterns here.
 

Conclusion

The steps for developing a patterned lesson plan are meant to be helpful.  Although you may find a need to move back and forth among various steps, the process itself is a lot like editing a draft essay.  Each new level can demand a revision in goals, or patterns, or technologies so that the whole lesson works together more consistently.  Sometimes, just as you feel it is complete, you may realize that there is a missing feedback point or a mini-lecture loop that will be needed.  Unlike our classes, where we are ultimately limited by the time in our class, here you can use media to lead students through all the steps that you think are needed to master a lesson.  Hopefully, these patterns will give you a framework around which to sort out these decisions and revisions.  Please contact me if I can clarify any of these steps or provide feedback on your efforts.