Backward+Design

This page gives you a way of creating a lesson plan based on benchmarks and indicators. Read the pdf. Look at the Ohio standards ( http://literacymethods.wikispaces.com/Ohio+Standards) and choose an indicator. Now use the backwards planning process and plan a lesson plan.



This is a form of lesson planning where you begin with the indicator you want to work with. After you choose that, then you choose the way that you know that children have mastered the knowledge or skill. Finally, you plan the teaching.

Using Imaginative Education ideas, you can develop engaging ways to introduce the concept you are working with. For younger children, focus on finding the story behind the concept. For example, if you are working on "students can recite their own address," then you might want to think about why people use addresses. Police officers need them to find people who need help. Pizza deliverers use them for hungry people. Postal workers use them to deliver the mail. Children could "be" one of these people and deliver something to "addresses" of desks in the room.

You might also want students to notice something in the environment that perhaps they have never seen before. You could take a walk in the school neighborhood to notice the numbers on people's houses and businesses.

All of this sets up some understanding of how addresses work and why they are important. Then you could have students bring in envelopes that their household has gotten in the mail, with their individual addresses on them. From this you can work to have each student learn his or her own address--to say it and also to write it. You could put the envelopes up on the elmo and practice saying the addresses together. Then have kids say their addresses to each other. As an exit ticket for going to lunch or leaving for the day, you could have each student say his or her address. Additionally, you could have students write their own addresses on 4x6 index cards, put stamps on them, and then children will receive their card at their house.

This set of ideas goes well beyond the indicator. It is an example of teaching "beyond" the standards. Helping students understand the "why" of something makes the "what" more memorable. If kids simply memorize a number, street name, city name, state, and zip, they are far more likely to make mistakes on it than if they know why there is a number, street name, etc.