Lesson Plan Template (Inquiry—for Math,
Sci, SS, Integrated Literacy)
HEADING:
Student’s Name: ______________________________________ Date: __________________________
Subject Area(s): _______________________________________ Grade Level: _____________________
Concept/Topic: _______________________________________ Time: __________________________
DESIRED RESULTS:
Big ideas/Key concepts:
Summarize the big idea(s) (overarching concepts that transcend all grades) and key concept(s) your
lesson is designed to address. What do you want students to understand about the topic? Include the
specific content information (i.e., specific statements, including important definitions and ideas) you
need to know about this concept in order to teach your lesson. Please use paragraph format. (National
Standards and Common Core Standards should provide you the background information to complete
this section.)
Objectives:
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 – and should clearly link what students already
know, as well as to the understandings and standards described in sections above.)
Curriculum Standards:
Situate your lesson within Pennsylvania’s Standards Aligned System (www.pdesas.org). List the
education standard(s) that will be addressed. (These standards should be closely related to the “big
idea(s)” and objectives described above.)
CONTEXT:
Who are the students? What grade level? Are there any specific characteristics of the class or of
individual students that are important to consider? What current knowledge, understanding, strategies,
experiences do students bring that this lesson will build upon? What strengths do the students bring
with them upon which you can build? What areas of growth can this lesson help to strengthen?
Where does this lesson fit 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? Where does the unit fit into the larger curriculum for the grade level/course?
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/concepts and objectives identified above. You
can consider the following questions:
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During and after the lesson, how you will 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?
How will you hold the students individually accountable for their learning?
LEARNING PLAN:
Pre-requisites: As necessary, list any prior skills that students will need to use during this lesson.
Materials and Technology:
List all the materials, equipment, resources needed for this lesson, including technology. Include a
separate list for teachers and students. If you have used other sources to develop your lesson, please
cite them here (use APA citation style).
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.
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).
Step-By-Step Procedures: (although these lesson phases are listed separately, we expect that students
will be engaged in and exploring the content throughout the lesson; that they will be explaining their
ideas and thinking throughout the lesson; and that teachers will be evaluating students’ performances
and learning throughout the lesson)
1. Engage: How will you get the students interested in what you are going to do and engage the
students in preliminary thinking related to the coming activity. Help the students understand
the problem setting, the mathematical context, and the challenge. This is the time to connect
students’ interests, previous experience, and understanding to the current problem. This is
where you may choose to make the objectives of the lesson explicitly clear to students.1
2.
Explore: How will students explore the problem or activity? Students may be gathering data,
sharing ideas, looking for patterns, making conjectures, and developing strategies.
a. Include in your lesson plan explicit questions 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 (think “High Press”).
1
In a problem-based lesson, it is possible that explicitly stating the objectives up front will all but eliminate
problem solving from the lesson. Therefore, it is up to you to decide when/how to introduce the students to the
specific learning objectives you have established for the lesson.
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b. Make sure to include anticipated student responses (especially “incorrect” ones) and
how you will respond to support the students’ thinking or adjust your lesson based on
student needs.
3. Explain: 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. The role of
the teacher is to highlight important ideas and to explicitly add any key ideas that were omitted
by the students.
a. Use the lesson’s big ideas and key concepts to identify what you want to highlight
during this part of the lesson.
b. Develop questions to help students develop or consolidate their learning in relation to
these big ideas and key concepts.
4. Elaborate: Are there any extensions or applications that will help you determine if the students
have met the objectives of the lesson? The focus here is on students generalizing their
understanding beyond the problems already posed and discussed.
5. Evaluate: The purpose of evaluation is for both the students and you to gauge the extent to
which students achieve the lesson objectives and the extent to which the lesson’s desired
outcomes were achieved. This section of the lesson plan should include the following: (1) A plan
for collecting data from students (Assessments can be formal, such as a piece of written work, or
informal, such as a closing activity in which students respond verbally to a series of questions);
and (2) An explanation as to how you will assess the extent to which students have met the
learning goals (e.g., “if students do x, then I will know that y.”) Assessment should be ongoing
and inform the teacher of points where an adjustment to the lesson needs to be made; and (3,
optional) An explanation of how students will evaluate their own learning, and also, their peers’
learning.
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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