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You
are here: Clickers, Be Aware!
by Cheryl Edwards and Lydia McCardle
Lesson plans abound on the World Wide Web, which raises the question: How can teachers identify high-quality and reliable lesson plans among the quantity of resources? This article presents guidelines for selecting the best websites and lesson plans the Internet has to offer. Only a click away are lesson plans on a wide array of topics and for all grade levels. A recent Google search turned up 6,450,000 lesson plan websites. All lesson plans, however, do not meet standards for effective planning and teaching. So, what's a teacher to do? The recommendation is for clickers to be aware.
Teacher candidates and teachers, especially new teachers, are increasingly looking to the Internet for teaching ideas. Often, they find ideas on lesson plan websites. With the demands of time and effort to create numerous lesson plans, these ready-made lesson plans are enticing. Educators should be circumspect in their use of Internet lesson plans and develop the practice of viewing sites with a critical eye and selecting those that meet standards for excellence.
Through a random review of several lesson plan websites, we discovered examples of high-quality lesson plans, but we also found many examples that fall short of the standards for effective teaching. Users need guidelines for judging the quality of lesson plans, but adjudicating one lesson plan at a time is very time-consuming. To simplify this task, first investigate the quality and reliability of websites.
It cannot be assumed that websites-- and lesson plans-- are evaluated for quality and reliability because they are posted on the World Wide Web. Websites are not subject to the same criteria as book and journal publishers. Neither is there a requirement that websites meet a set of quality standards. And there is no general system for users to rate or critique websites and their contents. At eBay.com, Amazon.com, and other sites that offer items for purchase, customers may rate products. Shoppers of lesson plans should have the same opportunity. A good website would provide the means for users to rate its products-- lesson plans-- and to post ratings. Many lesson plan websites carry no guarantee. It is left for the "buyer" to beware.
Potential customers should ask who sponsors the website and why? Commonly used domain names are .com, .edu, .gov, .net, and .org. [Inset 1] A domain followed by a tilda (~) means an individual authored the contents. The writer's credentials should be provided so users can determine the likelihood that the website and its contents are reliable.
Inset 1
Domains
.com = commercial establishment
.edu = educational institution
.gov = government agencies
.net = network services and Internet providers
.org = non-profit organizations
Many lesson plan websites, more than 800 thousand, are .com-- sponsored by for-profit businesses, which are usually supported by advertisements. Is the purpose of these sites to provide teachers with lesson plans or to sell something? There is no universal assurance that lesson plans found on .com sites are high-quality and reliable, so the merits of each website must be evaluated.
In addition to .com sites, lesson plans are offered by specialized professional associations, university libraries and departments of education, newspapers, magazines, businesses, school systems, governmental agencies, and foundations. Again, there is no general assurance of quality and reliability, but lesson plans available on the websites of professional associations, like the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), are credible sources. State departments of education also offer lesson plans, although these resources are easier to locate on some websites than others. Through our research, we identified Louisiana's Department of Education website (http://www.doe.state.la.us) as exemplary, with easily accessible lesson plans and quality-control resources-- a rubric for evaluation, guidelines for acceptability, and correlations to standards based on the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC).
If users are allowed to post lesson plans on websites, a criterion for fostering the likelihood of high-quality and reliable lesson plans is submission guidelines. In addition to a suitable set of guidelines, submitted lesson plans should be checked for accuracy before being added to the website offerings. Errors we found in lesson plans from a variety of websites ranged from failure to meet criteria for effective planning and teaching to missing elements in lesson plans to misspellings and grammatical mistakes.
Lesson plans are unacceptable if objectives are written as activities rather than learner outcomes. For instance, rather than, "The student will write a report using a newspaper," which is an activity, the objective written as a learner outcome is, "The student will correctly use the five elements of an article for the class newspaper." Additionally, an objective should be based on a specific standard, benchmark, and grade level expectation (GLE), and aligned with an assessment for each learner.
Another common error is assessing pupils' participation in activities. Instead, an effective lesson plan rates students' achievement of the objective. All parts of a lesson should be included, although various terms can be used to designate the parts. High quality lesson plans evidence continuity among objectives, activities that develop objectives, and evaluation of learner outcomes. There should be a logically developed set of procedures that include teacher and student roles, whole and small group experiences, and accommodations and modifications to meet the needs and interests of diverse learners.
The Internet is certainly a boon for teachers-- if it is used with caution. Undoubtedly, the quantity of lesson plans will continue to proliferate. Awareness of pitfalls makes clicking on the best websites and lesson plans [Inset 2] easy and helpful for busy teachers.
Inset 2
Two generally reliable sources for lesson plans are
The Educator's Reference Desk, www.eduref.org, and
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM), www.thegateway.org.
The Educator's Reference Desk provides guidelines for developing a lesson plan.
Resources
The Educator's Reference Desk http://www.eduref.org
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) http://www.thegateway.org
Google http://www.google.com
Louisiana Department of Education http://www.doe.state.la.us
Cheryl Edwards, an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Southeastern Louisiana University focuses her research and teaching in teacher education, interdisciplinary curriculum & instruction, service-learning, and differentiated instruction. cedwards@selu.edu.
Lydia McCardle is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Southeastern Louisiana University. She teaches assessment, science, social studies, and language arts methods in the elementary teacher preparation program there. lmccardle@selu.edu.
©January 2006 New Horizons for Learning
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