Lesson Plan Template (Teacher
Facilitated—Literacy)
HEADING:
Student’s Name: ______________________________________ Date: __________________________
Subject Area(s): _______________________________________ Grade Level: _____________________
Concept/Topic: _______________________________________ Time: __________________________
CONTEXT:
Composition of Classroom:
Who are the students? Describe the instructional context including any specific characteristics of the
class or of individual students that are important to consider. Include the following:
 Students’ background and attributes (Include: cultural background, prior knowledge, and prior
experiences)
 Students’ abilities (Include: cognitive strengths & weaknesses; social & behavioral
characteristics)
DESIRED RESULTS:
Big Ideas/Key Concepts:
What do you want students to understand about the topic? Summarize the Big Ideas (overarching
concepts that transcend all grades) and Key Concepts your lesson is designed to address. Include the
specific content and process information (Teacher Knowledge) you need to know about this concept in
order to teach your lesson.
a. Big Ideas
b. Key Concepts
c. Teacher Knowledge
Objectives:
1.
What do you want the students to be able to do at the end of the lesson? Continue to refer to
these objectives during the lesson. (These objectives should describe what students will “do” in
the lesson, and what they will be learning through that activity.)
2. Address Coherence and Continuity: Describe how this lesson fits into the unit. How does this
lesson connect to what came before and what comes after? What did students learn in previous
work that provides the underpinnings for this lesson and unit? How does this lesson relate to
other subjects?
Curriculum Standards:
List the education standard(s) that will be addressed—Pennsylvania’s Standards Aligned System
(www.pdesas.org) (These standards should be closely related to the “big idea(s)” and objectives
described above.)
EVIDENCE:
What data will you collect to assess the extent to which the desired outcomes were achieved? Explicitly
state how the collected data are linked to the big ideas and objectives identified above (e.g., “if students
do x, then I will know that y.”). Answer the following questions
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Describe how will you monitor progress during the lesson.
During and after the lesson, how will you determine if the students have gained understanding
about the big ideas/concepts?
How will you know if they are able to perform the skills taught in your lesson?
LEARNING PLAN:
Rationale:
 What about prior sessions with the students and your knowledge of students in general
prompted you to select the tasks and develop the ideas in this lesson plan as you did? Be
specific. Consider what theory is driving your instructional decisions as well as how you plan to
incorporate the Temple teaching standards into your lesson.
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Differentiation: Be specific. Explain how your lesson will help ALL students, including your
special education and linguistically diverse students, develop the big idea(s) and key concept(s).
Materials and Technology:
List all the materials/equipment needed for this lesson, including technology. Include a separate list for
teachers and students.
Step-By-Step Procedure:
Be very specific about the details of the lesson plan, such that someone, in your absence, could use the
plan to teach it the way you intended. For example, if you want to discuss something, how will you
facilitate the discussion? What will you say? Make sure you ask students to explain their thinking and
engage with the content on a higher level.
1. Launch:
a. Hook/Lead-in: Use actions and statements to gain students’ attention and to create an
organizing framework for the ideas, principles, or information that is to follow. Consider
using short video clips, brief passages from a book, songs, games, intriguing discussion
questions, and props (e.g., concrete visuals such as a hat or other real world item(s)).
b. Activate Prior Knowledge: Connect new information to their previous knowledge.
Review the necessary prior knowledge and make sure that students have the
prerequisites for new learning. This is where you make the objectives of the lesson
explicitly clear to students.
2. Instruction: Specify the steps required to instruct, model for, and to guide students. Decide
how students will participate.
a. Explicit Instruction or Worked Example: Describe the detailed procedures regarding
how you will guide students to learn a specific example so as to build students’ schema
for problem solving.
i. Begin by posing a question or presenting a problem (if possible depending on
the topic and objectives). After students have had time to consider the question
or problem, move to explicit instruction.
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ii. Write what you will say to students including the types of activities students will
do during the lesson and probing questions (higher level) to be posed to
students. These questions should probe students’ strategies and
understandings, foster further understanding, encourage student discourse,
provoke further discussion, and/or challenge misconceptions.
iii. Consider possible student responses and mistakes.
b. Modeling: Tell how you will use concrete representations to model concepts and
procedures.
c. *Guided Practice: This is the most important part of the lesson. Describe how you will
provide support (scaffolding) to students while they practice the skill(s) being taught.
Include questions you will ask to guide them. What will you do if students are not
experiencing success? During this part of the lesson, students discuss their solutions as
well as the strategies they used to approach the problem. Have individuals or pairs
share their learning.
3. Independent Practice: List the required independent practice so students can practice what
they have learned.
4. Application: Describe how students will apply newly learned skills and concepts to other
activities, content, or texts which could include extending the concept to real world connections
and/or problem solving based on the learned objectives.
5. Closure: The closure can be written or oral, but it needs to include a review AND a check for
understanding.
EVALUATION:
The purpose of evaluation is for you to check the students’ mastery of the lesson objectives.
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What will you do with the evidence you collected during this lesson?
ATTACHMENTS:
Attach any supplemental materials (e.g., worksheets, graphic organizers, etc.)
TEMPLE TEACHING STANDARDS (TTS):
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Review your lesson plan to make sure you have addressed the six TTS (Deep Content
Understanding, Coherence & Continuity, Real World Connections, Active Learning, Critical &
Creative Thinking, Teacher Reflective Thinking).
Revise, if necessary, to ensure all standards are included.
Be prepared to explain how your lesson plan addresses the TTS.
REFLECTION (AFTER THE LESSON):
Analyze the evidence you collected and reflect on how the lesson went:
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What did the students learn? How do you know?
What went well? What makes you think so?
What would you change if you were to teach the lesson again? Why?
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Explain how the evidence that you collected is also useful in thinking about something
more than the success of this particular lesson. For example, consider how your data
support or conflict with theory and research that you’ve read.
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