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 Ratings
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| Reviewed: |
Mar 20, 2006 by Teacher Education |
| Overview: |
The NCRTEC Lesson Planner was created by the North Central Regional Educational
Labratory (NcREL)to help teachers address essential questions for planning
curriculum units. Teachers bring their own content knowledge and are guided
through a series of 9 specific question sets. The question sets include guiding
questions about lesson goals, standards, assessment, student needs,and teaching
strategies. The result is a comprehensive lesson plan aligned with standards
that address assessment, content, teaching strategies and the use of technology.
The final aspect of lesson planning is teacher reflection-a section that is to
be completed after the lesson is presented. Links to state standards and guides
to the development of rubrics are
included.
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| Learning Goals: |
To guide teachers and teachers-in-training in the development of lesson plans
that address assessment, content, teaching strategies, and the use of
technology.
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| Target Student Population: |
Excellent resource for faculty teaching pre-service teachers, K-12.
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| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
Users need to understand their content,general knowledge of standards, rubrics,
the K-12 teaching environment, and have some knowledge of teaching
strategies. Pre-service teachers will need to 'create' scenarios of who their
students are, what special needs a student(s)may have, etc. as they may have
minimal experience in the classroom.
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| Type of Material: |
This is an interactive site where teachers can respond to a list of 9 question
sets to develop a teaching unit. Users type in their responses and then can
print out a final copy. Included within the lesson planner (in the assessment
section) are links to sites for creating customized rubrics and customized
checklists for project-based activities.
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| Recommended Uses: |
This online, interactive, lesson plan builder offers pre-service teachers a
structured model for planning classroom teaching units. This site offers faculty
the opportunity to have students create lesson plans entirely on-line and an
e-copy could be sent directly to the professor to evalaute. Students could
easily maintain the units they create in an e-folder for future reference.
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| Technical Requirements: |
Basic-access to a browser and ability to save lesson plans locally.
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| Strengths: |
The NCRTEC Lesson Planner provides reflective questions with supporting
materials for teachers and teachers in training at all levels. The inclusion of
links to tools for designing rubrics, articles on assessment, and standards are
especially helpful. The inclusion of reflective questions for evaluating the
lesson plan, although not extremely insightful, emphasizes that lesson planning
is an iterative process.
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| Concerns: |
It's possible that more specific questions re: students with special needs be
presented. Emphasis on learner characteristics and differentiated instruction
may be helpful. Veteran teachers may be more inclined to automatically think of
these issue when posed with the questions, "What student needs, interests, and
prior learning are a foundation for this lesson? What conceptual difficulties
might students have?" However, pre-service teachers may need further prompting
to understand that this includes students with special needs.
The inclusion of links to appropriate terminology for learning outcomes would
have strengthened this resource. Although the resource indicates that one
outcome is the use of technology, technology integration is only obliquely
referenced through a link to the Problem Based Learning Checklists Site.
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
Rating:    |
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| Strengths: |
The online interactivity offers greater ease for students and faculty to
maintain a 'running record' of the development of teaching plans, planning
instruction, and monitoring student understanding how teaching strategies are
linked to the content goal and student needs.
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| Concerns: |
Direct questions re: students with disabilities are missing.
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
Rating:  |
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| Strengths: |
The structure of this resource and the clarity of instructions makes this an
extremely easy resource for both students and faculty.
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| Concerns: |
The lack of teaching experience on the part of some teachers-in-training will
require that faculty supplement this resource with additional background on
writing teaching and learning objectives, exploration of teaching strategies,
and adaptation for specific populations
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| Other Issues and Comments: |
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