Clinical Practice for Students

Planning will always be an essential component of successful teaching, in all stages of one’s career. Regardless of experience (rookie or veteran), the ability to prepare good lessons and unit plans demonstrates an understanding of the concepts to be taught by the teacher and learned by the students. While it may take time to write a good plan, a written plan is still the best way for any teacher to prepare for everything that is needed for the lesson. For a teacher candidate, a written plan is also a tangible record from which cooperating teachers and college supervisors (and in some instances – principals) can evaluate preparedness and organization.

General rules for lesson planning during clinical practice

• All lesson plans during the initial weeks should be carefully written out and detailed using the template used by the school district or one of the candidate’s choosing (with cooperating teacher approval). A teacher candidate must plan in more detail than a veteran teacher.
• If the teacher candidate is using the cooperating teacher’s plans or is required to use a scripted curriculum lesson, then it is not necessary to write a plan for those lessons; that work has already been done.
• The cooperating teacher will review all written plans and he/she will assess the teacher candidate’s overall level of competency in planning for instruction. The cooperating teacher will then use his/her professional judgment to determine when the teacher candidate is ready for more autonomy in planning for any given subject. Autonomy means the teacher candidate can choose his/her own format/template for lesson planning. However, it is the expectation of faculty at Wayne State that evidence of adequate planning remains a priority throughout the clinical practice semester.
• At no point in the semester should the teacher candidate be allowed to stop writing plans altogether, but he/she may be allowed to shift to a less detailed and less time-consuming format. Note: Throughout the semester, planning must always meet whatever requirements have been established by the building administrator for all teachers in the building.
• When the college supervisor comes to observe, there should always be a detailed plan prepared for the college supervisor – even after the teacher candidate shifts to a less-detailed format most of the time

Instructional planning process

The courses you have taken to prepare yourself for teaching have included many examples, ideas, and suggestions for how to plan for instruction. Select from those ideas; figure out how you can best meet the needs of your students. Remember to account for their prior knowledge as well as their level of capability and always try to include a variety of strategies in the lesson.

1. Goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely: What will be taught? What will the student know or be able to do? How will you communicate the goal to students? What standards and/or learning targets will ensure a focus on the learning goal?
2. Accessing prior knowledge: What will you do to access prior knowledge? What strategies will you use? Input mode? Output mode? Differentiate for ALL learners: readiness, interest, or learning profile.
3. New information – content: What is new knowledge that students must learn to achieve the goal? What strategies will you use? Input mode? Output mode? Differentiate for ALL learners: Readiness, interest, or learning profile.
4. Apply knowledge – process: How will the learner make sense of the information? What strategies will you use? Input mode? Output mode? Differentiate for ALL learners: readiness, interest, or learning profile.
5. Goal summary – product: How will students summarize learning of the goal? How will you know that they met the learning goal? What strategies will you use? Input mode? Output mode? Differentiate for ALL learners: readiness, interest, or learning profile.

Your cooperating teacher and college supervisor have the right to request that you use any particular lesson plan format that they feel is most beneficial to your ability to effectively design lessons for your students. If there is any disagreement on lesson planning formats between the cooperating teacher and the college supervisor, the cooperating teacher has the final say regarding the format that you are to use.

Note: Lesson plans are never submitted to Canvas. It is a best practice to have a lesson plan written for all lessons that you are teaching during clinical practice. This can be daunting if the lesson plans are very detailed so discussing options such as first creating a curriculum map and then writing simplified lesson plans is a technique you may want to utilize. It is expected that you help to plan units of study with your cooperating teacher. Creating larger curriculum maps and unit plans would likely allow you to complete this task well.