Saturday, February 28, 2015



Reflection, The Key to Perfect Lesson Design
Dr. Wendy Ghiora – Posting #130 – March 1, 2015

Most teachers are well prepared with the basic elements of lesson design.
However, from personal observation as a school principal, I noticed the last element, “Summary/Reflection,” was often missing from the lesson.

This routinely neglected element could be considered the most critical to making the lesson a real success for both students and teachers alike.

Here is a brief review of basic lesson design taken from Madeline Hunter (Using What We Know About Teaching).


1.   Objective (Learning Target, Goals and Purpose)
What, specifically, should the student beable to do, understand, and care
about as a result of learning?

Not only do students learn more effectively when they know what they’re
supposed to be learning, how their learning will be measured, and why that learning is important to them, but teachers teach more effectively when they have that same information.

2.   Anticipatory Set or Orientation
The Anticipatory Set or Orientation serves to put students into a receptive
frame of mind.

An introduction, model, example,question, key vocabulary term or activity engages students and their focus on the objective/learning target.  The“set” may be motivational or pique curiosity about what is coming next in the learning.

3.   Input or Presentation
Students must acquire new information about the knowledge, process, or skill they are to achieve.

New learning must be chunked into“digestible bits” or small portions tailored to students’ level of understanding.


4.Modeling
During modeling, the skill, strategy,or task is named and given a purpose as students see and hear when and how it is used or applied.
This is followed by:
5.Guided Practice and 6.Independent Practice

7. Reflection/Summary/Closure
The teacher takes action to bring the lesson presentation to an appropriate
conclusion.

*Review and clarify key points
*Involve students in securing key ideas in their own minds
Closure is used to cue students to the fact that they have arrived at an
important point in the lesson or the end of a lesson.



Closure is the act of reviewing and clarifying key points of a lesson, tying
them together into a coherent whole and securing them to the student’s
conceptual network.

Students may be prompted to bring things together in their own minds, to
make sense out of what has just been taught.



“Any questions? No. OK, let’s move on,” is not closure.

Closure can help students organize and take stock of their own progress and
learning. Exit slips, sharing a summary with a peer or writing one are examples of closure strategies.

More on Reflection – Dr. Wendy Ghiora

After observing several classrooms where this part of lesson design was being neglected, I brought it up when conferencing with the teachers after my observation.  All of them had the same two responses for not including reflection:
1.   I forgot about it.
2.   I ran out of time.

This is why it is imperative to actually write this down as part of the lesson plan, so it will be included.  It is an excellent idea to have an outline that includes a timeline of sorts.  All one has to do is leave about 2-4 minutes for this at the end of each lesson.  Believe me, it is well worth it.

When students become reflective about the teaching and learning process, they are strengthening their own capacity to learn. Central to this is the principal of reflection as meta-cognition, where students are aware of, and can describe their thinking in a way that allows them to ‘close the gap’ between what they know and what they need to learn.

Reflection compels the student to think about and then put into words what new skill, knowledge or ability they have gained from the lesson. In this way, they are self-affirming an accomplishment. 

At the end of each lesson, for example, students can pair up and describe to each other, what they can specifically do now as a result of the lesson they have just completed.  Then the teacher asks for volunteers to share with the group what they told their partner or what their partner told them. 

As the teacher listens, it is the perfect assessment, for she now knows exactly what the students really understood and how they can use their new knowledge.

As a bonus, this is excellent PR for both the teacher and the school.  When the student goes home and the mother asks,

“So what did you learn in school today?”

Instead of the usual answer: “Nothing…”
The student will recall what he learned in your class. 
Why?  Because he was forced to:

1.Think about it.
2.Say it out loud to a classmate.
3.Listen to others (or maybe even himself or his partner) state what they learned.
4. Recognize his accomplishment and feel good about it.

The mother will then think,
“Wow, at least he is learning something in that class. What a great teacher that must be!”

This small, but important part of the lesson allows students to practice and develop explaining, rephrasing and clarifying skills. By listening to all of the student responses, the teacher can summarize by repeating the common elements or ideas presented and thank the students for their individual and team contributions toward understanding the topic more deeply.  This practice also engages students in learning to focus on the “big ideas,” and how to summarize those ideas.

The most significant outcome of this simple step is the knowledge the teacher obtains of what the students actually “got” from the lesson, and the certainty the students either have or don’t have when they leave the classroom. Now, the teacher can accurately plan the next day’s lesson.

Wouldn’t you agree, this is the key to perfect lesson design?

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