Click here for some helpful information about lesson planning and lesson plan ideas.

Some resources to use when you are writing lessons:

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy with Question Stems

Webb's Depth of Knowledge

Cognitive Complexity

Mini-Lesson Plan Template

Critical Thinking

Students need opportunities to engage in critical thinking to become successful critical and creative thinkers.  The following is a list of some essential critical thinking skills:

• anticipating (predicting, hypothesizing)
• classifying, categorizing
• comparing/contrasting ideas, facts, concepts
• discovering relationships
• analyzing processes
• making judgments
• using evidence to support an argument
• forming concepts
• drawing conclusions
• making inferences
• applying knowledge to novel situations
• reasoning inductively and deductively
• ordering information (by attributes, priorities, etc.)
• solving problems
• interpreting meanings
• visualizing a process, event, setting, character
• making decisions

Effective Strategy Instruction:  What Teachers Do

• show students how the strategy works - again and again and again
• show students their thinking when engaged with text
• show students how the strategy helps them understand what they are reading
• show students how to use the strategy in their everyday lives
• show students how to code the text to highlight a particular strategy
• let students practice the strategy in many texts over a lot of time
• give students time for reading to themselves
• give students time for having conversations about their texts
• provide guided reading practice
• provide read-alouds, shared reading and independent reading opportunities
• show students how to use the strategies with informational text and content area texts
• give students choice in what they read
• provide engaging activities for students to read for a particular purpose, to solve a particular problem, or to learn personally important information

Use some of the following strategies in your classroom:

Think-Pair-Share

A question is posed.  Students think about an answer and make notes.  Then students pair up to discuss their individual answers.  Then the class shares as a whole group.  With this strategy, each student gets to share at least once even if it is not at the whole group level.

Cooperative/Collaborative Learning

Students are put into groups of low, average, or high achievement levels to work on a common assignment.  The teacher should give clear instructions as well as clear guidelines about group responsibilities.

Cooperative Learning Groups

• facilitate academic gains
• create improved peer relationships
• increase pro-social attitudes and behaviors
• demonstrate a positive effect on classroom climate
• raise self-esteem among students
• promotes acceptance of mainstreamed students
• improves attendance
• shows marked increase in class participation
• students involved in cooperative learning like school and learning

Remember, we learn:

10% of what we read.

20% of what we hear.

30% of what we see.

50% of what we see and hear.

75% of what we discuss with others.

80% of what we experience personally.

95% of what we teach to others.

Research You Can Use to Improve Results