Outline for Learning Cycle Lesson Plan Development
- Select the concepts learners are to learn and write concise statements for them. Remember: Concepts are the ideas about a particular phenomenon students abstract from a learning experience. It is what the learners will have in their head when they walk out of the classroom.
- Choose the activities to use to collect supporting information for the concept invention.
- Select concepts from other areas which can be integrated; process skills, dispositions, perspectives, personal, and social to be integrated.
- Prepare instructions to give to learners for collecting the supporting information for all concepts they will be conceptualizing for possibly the first time. If written instructions are to be provided, write them. If oral instructions are to be used, make an outline of the procedure you will follow.
- Be certain the instructions direct learners only in the collection of the supporting information and do not tell them or hint what the concept is during these instructions.
- Prepare teacher guidelines for use during the conceptual invention
phase. Consider these factors for invention:
- The findings of the exploration need to be reviewed and summarized
- All findings used must come from the learners
- The concept must be stated by the learner several times
- The concept should be apparent in a variety of ways
- The concept should be generalized in a variety of ways
- Select the activities to use during the discovery, application, expansion-of-the-concept phase. Be sure these activities use the concept and its language freely.
- Decide on what kinds of assessment data should be collected.
- All learners should keep some kind of records and teachers should assess these records.
- Learners should record their observations. Young children can draw their observations and as they learn to write they can label and write descriptions. See activity section. As their ability to read and write matures they can be given written questions to focus their attention on information they will need to know, related to the concept, written questions to assess their understanding of the concept, and written questions to apply or expand the concept.
- Assessment questions. Learners should be tested as they were taught. They should not be given only cognitive knowledge level questions. How many centimeters in a meter? Questions such as 1) You measured the room with your feet. The class agreed on a standard straw unit. Why? 2) Why wouldn’t green bean seeds be a good choice for a standard unit?
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