Answers 2025/2026
Why we use lesson plans - ANSWERSLesson planning is at the heart of effective teaching.
Whether you have days or decades of teaching experience, lesson planning can enhance your
impact!
by Dr Lincoln Gomes and Georgie Lowe
1.TO PRODUCE UNIFIED LESSONS
Enables multiple teachers in a course to provide a consistent delivery and message to all
students.
2.TO FOCUS ON WHAT STUDENTS ARE DOING
Provides an opportunity for teachers to think about the types of activities needed to meet the
learning outcomes, how long the activities take and how students will be grouped.
3.TO MAKE THE LEARNING JOURNEY EXPLICIT
Provides an opportunity to identify and make explicit to learners, links within course content.
4.TO REFLECT ON ONE'S OWN CONTENT KNOWLEDGE
Enables the teacher to evaluate their own knowledge of the content to be taught.
5.TO IMPROVE TEACHER CONFIDENCE
Enables the teacher to remain in control of their lesson, and keep students on track.
6.TO MAKE IT EASIER TO SHARE PRACTICE
Enables other teachers to understand how your lessons are sequenced. This is especially
important when someone else is filling in for your lesson.
7.TO CREATE A RECORD
Serves as evidence of professional performance, and a record of how your pedagogy evolves
over time. At the end of the teaching period, it can be motivating to lookover your records and
see the impact you've had.
,8.TO PROMPT CONTINUING SELF-REFLECTION
Provides a framework for you to reflect on your teaching practice and make adjustments.
identify essential questions/big ideas - ANSWERSThe Big Ideas are the broad, overarching
themes of a unit. If they are presented in the form of questions, they may be known as essential
questions. The Big Ideas are the key concepts that you want students to internalize and take
away from the lesson.
Rick Chambers - planning the lesson - ANSWERSHello, I'm Rick Chambers. I've been one of the
writers for this section on Unit 4. Let's talk about essential questions. American educators Jay
McTighe, Grant Wiggins, Jeff Wilhelm and others have stressed the importance over the last ten
years of essential questions. These are the questions that are going to catch students' interest.
You've read the objectives for the lesson that are in the curriculum guide or syllabus, but they're
usually written in language that teachers understand, at least most of the time, but not that
students will immediately catch on to. So the teacher has to take the formal objectives and put
them in terms that will ignite kids' interest. These are the big ideas, the key concepts, that by
the end of the unit you want the students to have internalized and integrated into their memory
banks.
For instance, if the objective in grade seven science is something like "students will recognize
that in order to make an informed decision about environmental issues, scientific knowledge
and exploration are involved," you need to make that more relevant and immediate for your
kids. Begin by showing students one of those famous pictures of a polar bear floating in a tiny
chunk of ice in the Arctic. Is this animal's dismal fate the result of climate change? When we ask
"what effect does climate change have on Arctic animals?" we have an essential question that
addresses the objective. You have to have scientific knowledge and exploration to give an
informed answer. So that, kids, is what we're going to be doing for the next three weeks.
Essential questions help to motivate students and to show them where they're going with this
unit of study. The question should also feature somewhere in the culminating assessment
where the students will demonstrate what they've learned.
identify language features and needs - ANSWERSSome questions to consider here include:
What grammar points will be covered in this lesson? How can these be integrated into authentic
communicative tasks?
, Which reading, speaking, listening, writing skills will the learners be working on?
Is there a pronunciation component? How will this be presented?
What is the key vocabulary for this lesson, including subject-specific vocabulary?
include a balance of opportunities - ANSWERSWhen planning your lessons, ensure there is a
balance of opportunities for students to listen, speak, read, and write.
Include a variety of learning opportunities/activities:
1. Listening to teacher presentations and student commentary.
2. Speaking in group situations and to the whole class.
3. Extensive reading, reading for immediate use, and for future preparation.
4. Writing to practice new genres, writing to think and process new information, writing to
demonstrate learning.
practice linking concepts - ANSWERSExplicitly linking new concepts to students' background
experience or prior knowledge provides a bridge between the familiar and unfamiliar.
Linking older, known concepts to new ideas will help your students' comprehension and
comfort levels.
create a culminating task - ANSWERSAssigning a culminating task is a common way to assess
whether or not the content and language objectives have been met. The culminating task is the
final activity in a lesson sequence.
Choice Boards are one example.
Threats to Biodiversity:
1. Create a dramatization illustrating one major threat to biodiversity.
2. Create a radio or television commercial about one major threat to biodiversity.
3. Create a slide show or a digital story that illustrates one major threat to biodiversity.
4. Interview a member of an environmental organization about one major threat to biodiversity.
Film or present a summary of that interview.