Lesson Planning in a Nutshell (Teaching in a Nutshell)

Lesson Planning in a Nutshell

This guide is for educators who want to create purposeful, structured, and effective lessons without becoming overwhelmed by bureaucratic paperwork. The book offers a series of practical blueprints for designing a yearly roadmap, unit plans, and daily lessons that are focused and engaging. It empowers teachers to be the calm, confident architects of their lessons rather than frantic improvisers.

Key topics include:

• The Yearly Roadmap: Learn how to create a high-level curriculum map that provides a 30,000-foot view of the entire school year, ensuring all daily lessons are connected to a significant, long-term outcome.
  
• Charting the Course by Unit: This section details how to break the yearly plan into smaller, more manageable units that logically sequence a larger topic over a few weeks.
  
• The Daily Blueprint: Master the art of creating a functional, one-page lesson plan that outlines the objective, activities, and assessments for a single class period.
  
• Your Planning Philosophy: Explore foundational planning mindsets like “Understanding by Design” (backward design) and “Differentiated Instruction” to move beyond just filling out a template and become a more strategic practitioner.
  
• Objective vs. Activity: The book emphasizes the critical difference between what students will learn (the objective) and what they will do (the activity), ensuring every activity has a clear learning purpose.
  
• The 45-Minute Block: Learn to pace your lesson with a predictable rhythm using a classic structure of a hook, “I Do,” “We Do,” and “You Do,” to maximize learning and minimize wasted time.
  
• “I Do” - Clear Modelling: This chapter focuses on the importance of explicitly modelling new skills with a “think-aloud” to make your internal thought process visible and give students a clear example to follow.
  
• “We Do” - Guided Practice: Discover how to use this phase to provide a supportive bridge from teacher-led instruction to student independence through collaborative practice with peers and light scaffolding.
  
• “You Do” - Independent Success: Learn how to design a meaningful independent task and use this time to circulate, provide targeted feedback, and differentiate the learning for all students.
  
• The Learning Thermometer: This section explains how to move beyond asking “Any questions?” by using a toolkit of quick checks for understanding (like mini-whiteboards and visual checks) to constantly gauge student comprehension and adjust your teaching on the fly.