A lesson plan is an integral part of the teacher’s preparation for the upcoming lecture. It helps to fix the content in a sequence of the educational process, clarify the necessary formulations and concepts, and to build a logical sequence of information. Although in every school or university, there is a standard requirement to follow a lesson plan, there are plans of different quality and relevance, so some of them should be changed or substituted. This essay aims to present and analyze two different plans.
First of all, it is time to break down an example of a good lesson plan. The set of lesson plans written by Wayne Geerling and G. Dirk Mateer is composed to teach Economics with the help of a new teaching method. It becomes more common to use popular television shows or movies to show an example of any concept or phenomenon. According to Geerling et al, the ability of a lecturer to tie ideas to current or past episodes allows him or her to reach students in a way it was not possible before (162). All those five lesson plans are related to the videos from a very popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory. The third lesson, named “The Floppy Discs,” will be examined in the next paragraph.
To begin with, this lesson includes all the necessary parts a good lesson should contain, such as assessment, material, and objectives. This lesson plan is designed to teach students the notion of economic growth and show how technology development contributes to it. The intended age group is students from high school, ranging from the 9th to 12th grade. The lesson plan includes clear and appropriate learning objectives such as defining “technology” in economic terms and an explanation of the role technology plays in economic growth. Moreover, the plan has a well-structured assessment stage where three questions are related to the topic.
Despite referring to the TV show, the plan offers a piece of credible information on the topic and the case studies. The plan uses interesting resources such as a clip from the sitcom, information on case studies, and other definitions. Everything starts with a warm-up when a teacher asks students how they save information these days. Then students should watch a clip where Sheldon, one of the protagonists, explains why he still uses a floppy disk, which as a result failed to work.
This episode is here to ignite discussion on how computer development contributed to economic growth. This lesson plan is great to adapt to any classroom, as it implies a great method of reaching students’ minds making them active and concentrated. However, the work in the group part should be changed a little bit as it seems to be ineffective.
On the contrary, the lesson plan prepared by Mary Klein could be presented as an example of a faulty one. The author emphasized that this plan deals with the Socratic Seminar discussion. The topic of the lecture is the European Union and its geopolitical role. The plan is created to discuss students in the way close to debates to understand themselves at a profound level (Klein 6). Thus, the learning objectives of this plan seem to be too broad, they should be stated more precisely.
There are instructions on how to prepare before the class, but there are no specified materials in the paper. Instruction on the discussion is written properly, so everything is clear here. The assessment part, including questions and assessment sheets, is well-structured too. However, it seems that this outline needs more different activities. As practice shows, the whole lecture of debates makes students tired, and they gradually lose concentration.
To conclude, it is difficult to envisage an ideally conducted lesson or lecture plan, but it is an important tool. The first analyzed lesson about economic growth is an example of a good plan because it has all the needed stages, information, and the modern method of teaching. The second one on the EU is erroneous because it is very superficial, and there is a lack of structure.
Works Cited
Klein, Mary. European Union Lesson Plan. CSEES, 2019. Web.
Geerling, Wayne, et al. Lesson Plans for Teaching Economics with The Big Bang Theory. Economics faculty publications, 2018. pp. 161-184.