Communication Standard Lesson Plan Requirements:

You should submit your lesson plan using the Lesson Outline format. Expand the sections as needed to include all of the details for your lesson.

This lesson must have the necessary components to be an artifact for teacher standard 6:

Teachers communicate well.
The teacher uses effective verbal and nonverbal communication techniques as well as instructional media and technology to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.

What I will be looking for:

• Verbal communication: you should have sufficient detail in your lesson plan for me to know what you plan to say and how you plan to say it. I will be watching for evidence that you will be giving clear verbal instructions and/or explanations.
• Non-verbal communication: I will be looking for places where you will be showing (modeling) what to do and how to do it in the lesson. Non verbal communication does not mean that you are silent during that part of the lesson--it means that you are showing as well as telling children what they should do.
• Instructional media and technology: unless you work out something separate with me, you will be creating a SMART Notebook that you could use to help you teach and demonstrate in the lesson. Your field placement may or may not have a SMART board available. If you are lucky enough to have a SMART board in your classroom, you should use your SMART Notebook when you teach the lesson. If you do not have a SMART board, you will be showing our class your lesson plan using that SMART Notebook. Your presentation to us can take the place of using it in the classroom for the purposes of this artifact. If your classroom does not have a SMART board, and you have ideas for other "instructional media and technology" that you would like to use in teaching your lesson, please contact me about it.
• Active inquiry: your lesson must have an inquiry component that is fairly central. That means there must be some big question that children are trying to answer/understand as part of the lesson. Not all good lessons are inquiry lessons, but this lesson should be an inquiry lesson.
• Collaboration: your lesson must have a component where children are working together collaboratively.
• Supportive interaction: There are several ways to address this component, which is often part of a collaborative lesson. Some ways that a teacher can encourage supportive interactions are: making and enforcing class rules about being supportive of others (something to keep in mind for student teaching); discussing ways that children should act while working in groups (ideally a beginning of the year topic--also something more relevant for student teaching or later); and giving clear instructions about the roles children should play while working in groups (this is one I will be looking for). Clear instructions for group work are things like: "each person should do one part", or "you should take turns doing the first job. After the first person has done it once, please switch jobs so that everyone gets a turn".

You should include enough detail in the "teacher does" section of your lesson plan that I can tell that you have planned carefully your verbal and non-verbal communication. I will also be looking in this section for evidence that you are giving good instructions to children for how you expect them to work in groups or partners. If you will be able to use your technology piece in the classroom, you should include details on it in the "teacher does" section also. If you will not be using the technology piece in the classroom, you will discuss this in the reflection but not in the lesson plan.

There should be specific examples of things that you are doing in the lesson in the "inquiry components" and the "collaborative components" sections of the lesson outline sheet.

You are not required to have anything "practice" and "individual" components section. You should have something in the "Assessment" and "meaningful content" sections, though this does not have to be as detailed as what you did last semester.