Planning and preparing for progress

In a rapidly digitising world full of distractions, it can be daunting to plan engaging lessons that spark curiosity and inspire future chemists – not to mention ones that also meet curriculum, progress and assessment needs.

As the saying goes: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. By planning properly, we can overcome many, if not all, issues that arise in lessons. But where to begin? First, let’s go back to basics.

What is lesson planning?

Lesson planning is one of the most vital aspects of teaching. It involves teachers identifying their students’ existing knowledge and understanding alongside next steps to combine subject, topic and curriculum requirements in a way that maximises learning and potential.

Planning a lesson, a sequence of lessons or a learning scheme consists of different stages. But do you start with the end of the learning journey in mind or right at the beginning with learning objectives?

1. Questions to ask before and during planning

There are a few questions it’s useful to ask yourself before planning a lesson:

• What do I want the students to learn? Consider learning objectives and outcomes, subject knowledge, preconceptions, misconceptions and self-evaluation.
• How do I want the students to learn the chemistry? Think of key pedagogical approaches for the design and delivery of the lesson. For example, mastery learning, the science capital teaching approach, constructivism (zone of proximal development, scaffolding) or a mixture.
• How will I know they know? You can make use of a range of assessment techniques, such as formative assessment and assessment for learning (AfL), including self-questioning, self-assessment exit tickets, peer-assessment and success criteria, among others.
• And how will they know they know? You can develop a clear path to understanding which takes account of their challenges.
• How will students know their next steps? You allow them to reflect upon their learning and set targets for moving forward.

2. Learning objectives

What do you want your students to learn and how will you measure improvements in knowledge or skill?

You can judge the degree of success by assessing the learning outcomes. A few well-chosen objectives with clear measurable outcomes are best. So, for example, a learning objective that is framed as ‘understand how to titrate an acid and base’ is not very helpful for you or the learner, as it’s vague and can’t be measured.

Avoid over-complicating things – the more objectives there are, the more assessment you need to do and the less focus each will have. There’s also a higher chance that students will fail to achieve them.

3. Preconceptions/misconceptions

There are a few strategies you can use to identify student preconceptions and misconceptions, for example:

4. Assessment for Learning: how will I know they know?

Exit tickets are a formative assessment tool. You use them at the end of a lesson to help gauge the level of understanding among individual students in your class.

The following sentence starters, which are for students to complete at the end of the lesson, will help you design effective exit tickets that can be used to inform your planning:

• Three things I learned …
• Two things I want to know …
• The activity that most helped my learning was …
• I would now like to know what/why/how …

5. Involve students in the lesson plan

Share the lesson title and ask students to set their own learning outcomes. Ask students to revisit their outcome(s) at the end of the lesson. Did they successfully achieve it? If not, why not; if they did, how do they know? What target would they now set to bridge the gap or extend their learning?

The more they do this, the better they will be at planning, monitoring and self-evaluation – and the more adept they will become at setting their own targets.

Aaisha Patel, chemistry teacher at Soar Valley College, Leicester, reflects on the importance of ensuring students’ mastery of foundational chemistry knowledge and skills in the lesson planning phase, noting that ‘effective lesson planning in chemistry requires deep consideration of how students learn’. To do this, Aaisha breaks down ‘complex concepts into smaller, manageable steps, ensuring that foundational knowledge is secure before introducing new learning, reducing cognitive load’.

‘Mastery learning, in particular, has taught me the importance of sequencing learning, using regular formative assessment and offering enrichment opportunities to promote success. I use misconceptions as a learning opportunity, through discussion, questioning and carefully planned activities.

‘These are just some of the approaches that continue to influence my teaching, helping me create lessons that are purposeful and inclusive to support meaningful learning for every student.’