Education: Planning a Lesson is a Riguros Process

Effective lessons can be created through taking into account the various factors that can affect the learning of each individual child, and of the class as a whole. Planning a lesson is a rigorous process carried out by the teacher, where he or she analyses children and their level of capability, depending on the subject, in order to deliver lessons that can provide a valuable educational experience for all.

When introducing a topic for the first time, the teacher must first elicit the children’s prior learning, and then build on their existing knowledge by using scaffolding, relating to Principle 4. Scaffolding “consists essentially of the adult ‘controlling’ those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner’s capacity” (Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976:90). Teachers provide a temporary structure of support, a scaffold, by breaking down the topic into simple steps for children to understand, in order to “assist learners to develop new understandings, new concepts, and new abilities” (Hammond and Gibbons 2001:8). The scaffold can then be removed when children no longer need the appropriate guidance to understand the topic. Scaffolding has been used effectively in my own teaching, where the topic was non-fiction texts and the aim was for children to write a biography. We studied an eBook about the life of Neil Armstrong and identified the features specific to a non-fiction biography. After having looked at the grammar, structure and key aspects of the text, the final task involved writing the biography of a fictional character. Children studied the qualities an astronaut needs, ending in a lively debate over which fictional applicant should be chosen to go on a secret mission to Mars. They voted and decided on a fighter p...

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...e aware of their ability, when given the opportunity to complete the same undifferentiated task, the lower attainers performed as well as the higher attainers and wrote an imaginative biography, as the label disappeared when sitting on mixed ability tables. Setting often means that learners can become “disillusioned and demotivated by the limits placed upon their achievement within their sets” however in a mixed ability setting, the possibilities of achievement are infinite, as children are not restricted by their grouping (Boaler 1997: 592). Children in ‘low ability groups’ are often aware of the low expectations that adults have for them and streaming children creates a distance among the ability groups, whereas cooperative learning allows children with different abilities to work together effectively, and I witnessed this during the lesson (Sapon-Shevin 2005).