Planning for Learning

    Chapter four of Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School: Communities, Connections, and Citizenship, is about how to plan lessons. Lesson planning is finding objectives, strategies and checking for learning to use and put in lessons.

    There are multiple types of objectives; some include behavioral or performance. 
Objectives are usually the results a teacher wants students to meet during the day, whereas outcomes are generally a standard. A way to think of objects is "... as a specific skill or concept that the students must have to master the educational goal that was created" (Lyman et al., 2015). Behavioral objectives are supposed to identify the students' behavior which will be assessed at the end of a lesson to see how much of the desired outcome or learning has happened. Performance objectives measure "... the knowledge, skills, abilities, and achievements of the student" (Lyman et al., 2015). 

    These objectives can also be broken down into more goals. Some examples include: affective, psychomotor, and interpersonal.

    Lyman et al. state, "task analysis is selecting and sequencing instructional objectives appropriately" (2015). Which task a teacher chooses can determine the learning experience for students. 

    After determining what will be taught by looking at objectives, teachers must decide how it will be introduced. Teachers can do this by using different learning plans/designs. Teachers may also have to provide different instructions for students, and this is to allow some students other ways of reaching the objectives.

    Personally, planning may be one of the most tedious things about teaching, but at the end of making the plans it is worth it because you always have a reason and explanation for what you are teaching. 

References

Lyman, L., Foyle, H. C., Waters, S., & Lyman, A. L. (2015). Teaching Social Studies in the 
    Elementary School: Communities, Connections, and Citizenship. National Social Science Press.