This document provides guidance on developing effective lesson units organized into a cohesive framework. It recommends identifying the unit focus, deciding on a central task, and planning critical input experiences and activities. Teachers should create an outline guiding weekly development. The document also suggests planning for routine lesson components like rules and procedures, as well as content-specific segments involving input, practice, and hypothesis generation. Flexibility is important when designing segments to address issues as they arise. Teachers are advised to review critical aspects of teaching daily.

1. Chapter 10: What will I do to develop effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit?
Teachers are still free to organize this content into units of their design.
In the classroom Identify the focus of the unit
Decide the centerpiece of the unit which will be a task.
Plan for specific critical-input experiences as well as activities that will deepen student’s
understanding of the content.
Create an outline for the weeks that it takes do develop the unit.
The outline provides a framework to guide your decisions.
Rules and procedures: communicates the message of high expectations
Research and Theory Teachers use these units to organize new content in ways that provide a cohesive
framework for the entire semester or year.
Academic task is the basic unit of organization within a lesson.
A teacher who designs and organizes academic tasks well will produce better student
learning that a teacher who doesn’t.
Academic activities: incremental, practice, restructuring, and enrichment.
Textbook might have less influence on the way teachers organize instructional segments
than one might think.
Decisions teachers make about the focus of units of instructions, the less within those
units, and the segments within each lesson provide the infrastructure for effective or
ineffective teaching.
Real time decisions are point of contact between teacher and students.
Flexibility is a critical component of effective planning.
Action steps
Action step 1. Overall focus.
Identify the focus of
a unit of instruction. It affects many other aspects if the unit.
Focus on Standards should also form the basis for planning at the classroom level.
knowledge Critical-input experiences.
Deepen student’s knowledge regarding the goals.
Requires students to go beyond the information contained in the learning
goals.
Focus on Issues Hypothesis-generation and testing
Deal with values
Focus on students Once students begin to make progress on these goals students are asked
exploration to identify their own essential questions.
Hypotheses you want to test? Problem you want to examine? Decision you
want to examine?
Action step 2. Plan for lesson segments Students practice their new knowledge or skill under direct teacher
that will be routine components of every supervision.
lesson No single design for all lessons will suffice for all situations.
Flexible form of lesson design involves: 1 segment that will most likely be
part of every lesson; 2 segments that focus on content; 3 segments that
address actions that must be taken on the spot.
Consider the following routine issues: rules and procedures,
communicating learning goals, tracking students’ progress on learning
goals, and celebrating success on learning goal.
Action step 3. Plan for content-specific Academic content
lesson segments. One content segment is addressed in a single lesson.
Determine before classes: critical-input experience, activity that helps
them practice or deepen their knowledge, presented with a hypothesis-
generation and testing task or asked to work on such task that was started
previously.

2. Lesson segments Lecture
devoted to critical Materials students read
input experiences Physical demonstration
Video or DVD presentations
Field trips
Seek for variety in the mediums used for input experiences
Expository and narrator format
Ask students question that require them to elaborate on the content,
engages students in activities (summarize and re-present the content and
reflect on their learning)
Lesson segments Procedural knowledge should not be assigned as homework until they can
devoted to practice perform the procedure independently
and deepening Ask and answer these following questions:
students’ 1. What practice activities will I use, and what is my role during these
understanding of activities?
content 2. Am I using a variety of practice activities?
3. What knowledge-deepening activities will I use, and what is my
role during these activities?
4. Am I using a variety of knowledge-deepening activities?
5. What will the role of homework be in these activities?
6. How will grouping be used in these activities?
Lesson segments Consider how much time will be provided for students to work on these
devoted to tasks in class.
hypothesis- Teacher acts as a resource for students.
generation and
testing task Asking students about the progress offering support and guidance.
Action step 4. Plan for actions that must be Engagement: considering a variety of engagement activities.
taken on the spot. Consequences for rules and procedures: providing consequences for
adherence to and lack of adherence to rules and procedures is a day-today
activity.
Relationships: communicating and appropriate level of guidance;
appropriate level of concern and cooperation.
Expectations: Low –expectancy students are being treated in the same
manner as high expectancy students.
Action step 5. Develop a Flexible draft of Sketch out the mayor activities in the unit.
daily activities for a unit. Formal assessment at the end of each week.
Action step 6. Review the critical aspects Effective teaching is a complex endeavor involving many interacting
of effective teaching daily. components.
Teacher reminds himself of the complexities of teaching on a daily basis.