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Planning Lessons
Regardless of if you are teaching a lecture, facilitating a class discussion or leading a lab, knowing how to plan an effective lesson is one of the most important elements of successful teaching. Planning a lesson requires important consideration of your outcomes, your environment, activities and time. We offer more detail on each of these below and provide a framework which you may wish to follow to plan your lesson.
Outcomes
Setting your outcomes is a critical first step in planning your lesson. Your outcomes are the knowledge, skills or values you want students to leave this lesson with. These outcomes shape what you and your students will do in each part of your lesson.
Based on your overall course learning outcomes, individual lessons should address elements of your course learning outcomes. Not every lesson need, or should, touch on each course learning outcome, but over the entire course, across your various lessons, each course learning outcome should be achieved.
As you are planning your lessons across an entire course, consider which outcomes are more complicated or require knowledge and skills from other outcomes and how you may want to sequence these across the semester. Consider taking a backwards design approach to aligning your outcomes.
Activities
Once your outcomes are set, you can begin planning the activities that you will implement to support students in achieving these. Activities may include lecturing, generating questions, breaking out into small group activities to complete think-pair-share or buzz groups, or other activities depending on your outcomes, teaching style and environment. For more consideration of the types of engaged activities you may want to implement, check out our active learning page.
Teaching Context and Environment
Considering the modality and physical environment of your course is an important planning consideration for your lessons. If you have a 30-student seminar, the activities you use to achieve your outcomes will be different than if you have a 500-student lecture. Other considerations such as the ability to change the physical space (i.e. tables in small groups vs. rows of chairs) will also impact what you plan.
Time
The final consideration you will need to plan for is your timing and how you will achieve your outcomes within the allotted time. When you build out your activities, allow appropriate time for each stage of the activity. For activities that engage students, build in buffer time for things like thinking time, engaged discussion between peers and transitions if students need to physically move around, or navigate to specific spaces on their computers. If you are newer to teaching, plan for the unexpected with timing. For example, if your lecture goes by faster than you thought, plan additional activities to maximize student learning during class time. If your discussion runs overtime, what can be cut from your lesson while still meeting your objectives?
BOPPPS
A common lesson planning approach is BOPPPS, an acronym which stands for Bridge-in, Outcomes, Pre-Assessment, Participatory Learning, Post-Assessment and Summary. While BOPPPS is not the only approach to planning a lesson, its simple structure and easy to follow approach makes it a good starting point for those who are new to lesson planning or looking to embed a lot of active learning strategies into their lesson design. Below, we describe in more each of the components of BOPPPS, as well as why each can be helpful for instructors and learners. When teaching a course, a single BOPPPS lesson may be contained to one individual class session, or spread out over multiple, with for example, each unit having a pre-assessment and outcomes, but each class session having its own unique bridge-in and post-assessment. The framework is flexible enough that instructors can also adjust and modify the components by trying out things like coupling the bridge-in with a pre-assessment, embedding participatory learning throughout, and merging the post-assessment with the summary.
The bridge-in is the hook to the lesson, it may be something relevant in the real world, or an engaging audio or video clip.
The bridge-in helps the instructor gain learners’ attention, build motivation and establish relevance
Learners find out why they should care about the material, and why they should learn about it.
(Learning) outcomes state what students should be able to know or do by the end of the lesson. These should be measurable, and able to be achieved within the scope of the lesson
Outcomes help the instructor clarify what students should get out of the lesson and streamlines the planning of the lesson to focus on the outcomes
Learners find out what is expected of them in the lesson and what they will be focusing on.
The pre-assessment determines what students already know and how that can be used to strengthen instruction.
Pre-assessments help instructors adjust the level and pace of learning and tailor learning to students’ interests and abilities.
Learners are given a chance to recall prior knowledge and identify any knowledge gaps which may need to be addressed.
Participatory learning activities are the tools and techniques that will allow students to be engaged and active in their learning. Refer for example to our resources on active learning for ideas on how to do this in your classes.
Participatory learning sees the instructor engage students in activities to maximize learning and outcomes.
Learners are given opportunities to deepen their learning by being actively involved in achieving the outcomes set for the lesson.
The post-assessment determines what learning has taken place and if the outcomes set at the beginning have been met. This can include low-stakes formative assessments such as short student responses or quizzes, as well as larger summative assessments.
Post-assessments allow instructors to gauge if students have achieved the outcomes and determine where there are gaps in understanding that may need to be addressed.
Learners determine if they have achieved the learning from the lesson and where they may need to focus additional energy.
The summary reminds learners of key takeaways and sets up connections to future lessons.
A summary allows the instructor to give a sense of closure to the lesson and set the class up for success in future lessons.
Learners get a chance to appreciate the significance of the lesson in the whole course and to review the most important takeaways for the lesson.
Template for Lesson Plans
A template for planning lessons can be helpful in outlining your thinking and framing your lesson. We offer an example below that you may adapt for your own purposes, with some reflection questions to consider:
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Topic:
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Materials Needed:
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Time |
Component |
Consider |
Task |
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Bridge-in |
How is the bridge connected to the lesson? |
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Outcomes |
Are the outcomes clearly stated and feasible in the amount of time? |
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Pre-assessment |
Will this help you see what learners know before the lesson? |
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Participatory Learning |
How are you actively engaging learners in the lesson? |
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Post-assessment |
Will this show you whether learners have met your outcome? |
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Summary |
Do you summarize in an engaging or forward-looking way? |
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