TPA Lesson Plan

    Eastern Washington University has adopted an adaptation of a lesson plan template from the University of California for teacher candidates to use. This template requires a lot of thinking and writing but is a tool to teach student teachers how to think about lesson planning. By the time students graduate, they will have written several lesson plans using the TPA. Though they may not use the TPA, specifically, again in their teaching careers, the TPA trains teachers how to think and what do consider when making a lesson plan until it is instinctual.

     When considering a unit, the teacher needs to know the demographic of their classroom and the culture of the students being taught and even their parents. Personalities and personal hardships both effect how a classroom operates each day. Teachers also consider individual student needs when planning the specific activities for each lesson. Instruction should begin with standards to which goals and objectives are related. One thing teacher candidates learn is that learning activities and instructional strategies should be based on research and thoughtful planning. The teacher is held accountable to use best practices. Teacher candidates write what my school calls a “Learning Target” so each student knows what they are learning. Teachers need to explain the core vocabulary used and how the target relates to their learning.

     Some things that I personally need to work on in my lesson planning are assessment and making connections between the objectives and activities to the assessment and learning goal. One question is, “How will you record what you see and hear.” So far, I do not have an ongoing file on my students other than the gradebook. I am not too good at keeping details of what they have learned individually in my head. When students take assessments, every question should be aligned with an objective. Students should be able to really show what they have learned. Furthermore, students may not understand that the activities they do help them learn skills we will look for in their assessment. We want to see them to see the line of improvement in their skills as we work on assessing them.