Lesson plans have three primary functions. First, the process of preparing them helps instructors organize their thoughts for each day's work with children. Second, they provide documentation that becomes the basis for reflection and future refinement of the instruction process. Third, they enable instructors to document and exchange specific teaching strategies in a format that is easy for others to understand and follow. If multiple instructors, volunteers, interns, etc. are working with children in a single class, creating a lesson plan ensures that everyone knows how and when the activities will be done, and why they are being done.
A lesson plan describes a set of activities that are implemented over the course of a single session. In this context, for example, a lesson plan would describe what happens in an out-of-school program with one group of children on one day. This is distinct from a project, which is a series of interrelated lessons, implemented over sequential sessions that result in a product or group of products.
A lesson plan is a working document. See, for example, our sample
lesson for 5- to 8-year-olds called "Camera Investigations."
Your organization may want to assemble an ongoing "best of" collection
of lesson plans that have been rewritten to reflect how they were
actually implemented or should have been implemented.
Since a lesson plan is first and foremost a personal planning tool for an instructor, each instructor should use a format that works best for him or her. At a minimum, lesson plans should include:
- age of children
- length of time of activities
- objectives (what children will accomplish/produce by the end of the session)
- learning outcomes (skills and competencies that children will practice or develop)
- activity steps/procedures
- materials
- strategy for incorporating the use of the Internet and related technologies
Other planning areas might include:
- introductory activities
- transitions (activities that bridge a change of activity or a physical move to another space)
- closure (activities that help children process what they have learned, and prepare them for the next day's work)
- assessment (how to determine what children have learned)
