[0:06]Hello, I'm Tyson Seburn and in this video, we will take a look at the role lesson plans play in connecting learning outcomes with its individual parts. Lesson plans answer the central question, why am I doing this here? If you're like me, early in my career, I spent many hours writing a detailed lesson plan like I practiced in my training courses. Though slow, this process helped me consider how I could achieve learning outcomes throughout the lesson. Later in our careers, perhaps we don't write a long lesson plan because that safety net isn't as necessary. This is normal, especially as experience and confidence grows. However, lesson plans serve an important pedagogical function, no matter where we are in our careers. They help us identify learning outcomes are being achieved through materials, timings, learner groups and order in a concrete way. That's far clearer on paper than simply in our heads. Let's start with what learning outcomes are and aren't.
[1:16]I've always kept these reflective questions by Battersby and the Learning Outcome Network in mind, as I approached curriculum design. What is essential that students know or be able to do? What could students make powerful use of to enhance their lives or more effectively contribute to society? On a lesson level, they adapt this approach to define what we want learners to be able to do by the end of it. Learning outcomes for one lesson, therefore are, the subskills we want learners to increasingly become comfortable with, and the specific use of language points we want learners to practice. Learning outcomes aren't a list of the tasks and activities we will use, or vague descriptions like exposure to or introduction to something. The better defined they are, the easier it will be to decide what materials, groupings and even approaches best achieve them. To help, define your learning outcomes simply at the top of the lesson plan. Then, as we add components to each stage, compare each to our learning outcomes and identify which they're moving forward. Sometimes using colors to visualize that connection helps. We ask ourselves, why am I doing this here, repeatedly? We apply this question to every activity and every choice of individual, pair or group work we've planned, and every activity order. If there is no clear answer to connect it to our learning outcomes, then we modify our choices. Technology is now also a big piece of the language classroom. A lesson plan forces us to examine why we're using a tech tool within this lesson. We can categorize as effective versus just bells and whistles. Even more broadly, lesson plans work together. Look at the learning outcomes for next class. Put the previous learning outcomes at the top of our lesson plan to keep scaffolding in mind. How do these learning outcomes connect to or build on the last? Having a lesson plan, whether it's fully detailed or more skeletal, helps us feel confident that our materials and activities are doing what we think they're doing. And if we see that components of our lesson don't connect strongly to any of our learning outcomes, sometimes to our surprise, we can then ask, why am I doing this here, and replace it with something better. So my tip is, always ask, why am I doing this?
