After doing observation hours in several first-year teacher's classrooms, they all seemed to agree on one thing- the hardest part about being a teacher is lesson planning. Designing lesson plans can be extremely difficult at times, especially if you don't have a whole lot of time to plan in advance. Even though there are certain guidelines that must be followed and national curriculum frameworks define what will needs to be taught, there's still quite a bit of room for creativity, and teachers still need to plan exactly what to teach every single day. Whenever teachers actually teach a lesson to their class, they chose the exact academic content they wanted to teach their students that day. Using the internet can be extremely useful because it gives teachers access to MANY more resources. The book mentioned that with the internet, teachers are able to have access to "search engines, electronic databases, online encyclopedias, blogs, wikis and other technology tools..." (Page 76).
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The book has a section titled "Web Sources and Apps for Lesson Planning" on page 80 that mentions quite a few of the many resources available online. It gives example of a few websites and apps that can be of help when a teacher is seeking help creating a lesson plan. Most of the apps just help with organization or give teachers access to useful materials like Math Red Free, an app with hundreds of math formulas, figures, and strategies. The websites this section mentions include many multimedia resources such as lesson plans, interactive activities, and videos to show your students. Resources like this could help a new teacher have an idea of what a lesson plan should look like, or maybe even just help the teacher come up with an idea and branch off from there with their own ideas. My boyfriend just graduated from FSW with his Bachelor's degree in middle grades science education, and he always tells me how helpful online resources can be when it comes to creating a lesson plan. He uses sites similar to the ones the book mentions, and says that if you can properly use the internet as a tool to help you create a lesson plan, the possibilities are endless. One of his favorites is CPALMS.org, where you can find standards, helpful ideas, and even example lesson plans.
When creating a lesson plan, you should also have in mind ahead of time how you plan to assess your students on the information you're giving them. Many teachers tend to assess their students however they were most often assessed when they were in school. Lecturing used to be the most common form of teaching. I'm personally pretty accustomed to multiple choice SCANTRON testing, and even though I never minded that form of testing, I wouldn't want that to be my only way to assess my students. I believe that you should have all different types of lessons, and different ways of assessing your students. Standardized testing is another way that teachers can assess their students, and ensure that they are at the level they need to be at in regards to their grade level. For the most part, these tests matter more than any other type of assessment because if a student scores low enough, they can be held back a grade level.
RESOURCES
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Your BitStrips character looks a bit uncomfortable on that couch! :) Lacking lesson ideas is definitely not as much a problem with the amazing resources on the internet - it is a treasure's trove. Some are much better than others, of course, but it is nice to know that they are just a few typing strokes away. It still remains time-consuming, as noted by the teachers you've observed. Thankfully, the more experience you gain, the easier it will become to modify and adjust what you've done in the past and/or design your own.
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