Chapter 4: Unit and Lesson Planning
Chapter 4: Unit and Lesson Planning Chapter Overview You are now ready to consider planning and its relationship to the decisions you will make in the classroom. Planning is the systematic process of deciding what and how your students should learn. Teachers make one such decision on average every 2 minutes they are teaching, according to an estimate by Clark and Peterson (1986). However, these thinking "on your feet" decisions are only part of the decision-making process. Teachers also make many other decisions about the form and content of their instruction, such as: how much presenting, questioning, and discussing to do; how much material to cover in the allotted time; and how in-depth to make their instruction. In chapter 3 you saw the importance of goals and objectives in the planning process. Now let's consider three other factors in the planning process: knowledge of the learner, knowledge of your subject matter, and knowledge of teaching methods. This chapte...