Lesson Planning with Shulman

Video Transcription

Hi. Thank you for joining me today for Lesson Planning with Shulman. Remember, this class is all about you, the learner. So feel free to pause, fast forward, rewind, or take any of the resources from this presentation to help you with your teaching.

Let's get started by looking at the essential questions. First, we're going to answer, how can I use Shulman's framework for lesson planning? And how can I incorporate 21st century technology into my lesson plan?

A few reminders before we get started-- today's application lesson is based on teaching how to write a well-organized essay. We we'll look at how to incorporate Shulman when we're writing this lesson plan. The examples will be given in blue. And there are no key terms for this lesson.

Let's do a quick review of Shulman. If you remember, Shulman has six observable teacher behaviors-- comprehension of understanding, transformation, instruction, evaluation, reflection, and new comprehension. Comprehension of understanding is simply a teacher's content knowledge. Transformation is when a teacher figures out the best way to teach her students the content knowledge. Instruction is the actual learning activities that go on in the classroom.

Evaluation is assessing whether or not the students have met the objective that the teacher has set. And this could be formative or a performance event. Next, we have reflection. And this is when the teacher reflects as to what worked and what didn't. And then she has new comprehension and moves forward with his or her next lesson based on the findings from this lesson.

With that in mind, let's look at how to use Shulman when we're planning a lesson. The lesson we're using, again, is a writing a well-organized, five-paragraph essay. First, I want to look at comprehension for understanding. The question I'm going to ask myself is, what is the purpose or the objective of the lesson that students need to know or be able to do? In this case, students will be able to write a well-organized, five-paragraph essay. Furthermore, they'll understand why organization is important to essay writing, and they'll have a deep understanding of how to organize an essay.

Moving on to transformation of ideas, the questions we're going to ask here are-- what is the best way to prepare and represent the content for students to understand? How can I adapt to meet the needs of all of my students? What materials and selections are best suited for my students? I've decided the best way to prepare and represent the content for students to understand is by having them look at essays. These could be professionally-written essays, essays from a writing textbook that I have in my class, or maybe they're essays from other sections of my class or from that class itself, just examples of good writing.

I'm going to have the students identify the thesis statement and the organization of the essay by creating an outline for the essay. So they're working backwards, starting with the final product and moving backwards to the outline and eventually to just writing the thesis. Hopefully by going through this process, the importance of organization will become clear to the students.

I will partner my lower achieving students with my higher achieving ones for small group work on this project to provide for peer scaffolding. This is one of the ways that I'm going to adapt to meet the needs of all of my students. I could also put my students in groups based on their ability and give them all different levels of essays. So the end outcome is the same. They're taking an essay, and they're creating an outline based on it. But the level of the writing in the essay might be differentiated so that students can better understand the essay and meet the goal.

Continuing on to instruction, I'm going to ask myself, have I set clear routines and expectations for my students? Have I incorporated group work when appropriate? Are students aware of behavioral expectations? Do I effectively incorporate humor? Am I using effective questioning techniques? And have I provided opportunities for discovery and inquiry?

So classroom rules and expectations and behavioral expectations have been in place since the beginning of the year but are reviewed frequently. This is actually very important, because once you establish the rules and expectations as well as the behavioral expectations of your classroom, things can run smoothly. It could be as simple as something I do. Because I walk the aisles to observe my students when they're working, I request that when they get to class they put their book bags on the right-hand side of their desk. That way, I can walk on the left-hand side of their desks without tripping over a walkway filled with book bags.

By having these rules and expectations, we're able to have a predictable schedule and transition into the different learning activities for the day quite easily. There's also no question for what are we going to do next and no students getting distracted by not knowing what's going on. I also incorporate humor by simply being personable with the students during instruction.

Sometimes teachers make snafus when they're teaching. For instance, maybe it's a typo here or maybe we even put the wrong definition. It's OK to laugh at yourself. It lets the students know that you're human. And it's also important to let them know that we're always learning and developing too. Adults aren't perfect.

Am I effectively using questioning? I've decided that I am effectively using questioning by giving the students a guide and modeling the type of questions I want them to use. They're then going to use these questions to peer edit one another's outlines and papers, which they're eventually going to be working on. And this is a good way to inject technology because we're going to be peer editing by using online tools-- for example, Google Docs.

And have I provided opportunities for discovery and inquiry? I think I have provided opportunities for discovery and inquiry by having small groups explore and dissect essays for organization and assigning one for the students to write. So not only are they dissecting the essays and discovering, but they're writing essays. This is the inquiry aspect.

Lastly, I'm going to have them peer edit using Google Docs. For evaluation, I'm asking myself, have I included checks for understanding throughout the lesson that makes certain that the students are getting it? Am I adjusting when they are not or if they have already mastered it? I am checking for understanding by having students practice writing thesis statements, turning in outlines based on other essays, and creating their own outline or graphic organizer for a potential essay. These will serve as formative assessments, and I will base my reteaching or moving forward in a lesson on these results.

For reflection, do I review, reconstruct, reenact, and critically analyze the decisions I make instructionally? I certainly should. And I use reflection practices such as a journal, setting goals for reviewing them and assessing whether or not students are reaching their instructional goals. This all leads to my new comprehension. Am I developing a deeper understanding of both the content and my students?

My understanding of how my students learn and how I want to organize and teach my writing unit and other units in the future is changed based on my evaluation and reflection. Maybe I tried to use too much technology, and there is such thing as that. And I decide, next time, we're not going to use Google Docs to peer edit. We're going to do old-fashioned peer editing in class or maybe I use group work for the first time for an activity like this, and it went really well. I'm going to want to do that again in the future.

Let's reflect. Do you feel you can update a lesson plan using Shulman? What challenges do you foresee if you do this?

So to review, we were able to answer, how can I use Shulman's framework for lesson planning? It's all about answering the questions that was in the slideshow and addressing the six observable behaviors. And then how can I incorporate 21st century technology into my lesson plan? It's pretty simple. And this technology is all around us. In this lesson, it mostly relied on a simple word processor for students to type their essays and to use an online format to provide live feedback.

As you reflect on how this new information can be applied, you may want to explore the additional resources section that accompanies this video presentation. This is where you'll find links to resources chosen to help you deepen your learning and explore ways to apply your newly acquired skill set. Thanks for joining me, and happy teaching.