Chapter 6 - Instructional Planning

Preparing detailed, written lesson plans will be very essential for me as a first-year teacher.  Lesson planning will allow me to be prepared for my students before they enter the classroom and I will be able to fill every precious minute of the class period.  Since we now have the ability to save documents on a computer, lesson plans can easily be revised from year-to-year. The lesson plan can be a place to keep a list of learning activities, assessments, and resources.

Chapter 6 of our textbook mentions the importance of "anchor activities."  I have never heard of this term, but  I am aware of the importance of not allowing middle school students to be left with unstructured time. An anchor activity is something that is always in place for the students to work on.  The teacher might fall back on an anchor activity if the planned lesson does not take up the entire lesson time or if she has to expectantly leave before the end of the class period.  Examples of anchor activities are:

• journal writing
• project
• portfolio
• review of taught material
• learning center
• homework (Kellough, 244)

More anchor activities not mentioned in our text are:

• Read a book that is part of an interdisciplinary thematic unit
• Create a study guide that goes along with the unit
• Work on a teacher-provided study guide
• Work with a group to plan a lesson to teach to the class
• Research a topic that the student wants to learn about and that fits in with the unit

Kellough, Richard D. and Kellough N. (2008). Teaching Young Adolescents:  Methods and Resources   for Middle Grades Teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Education, Inc.