How to Write A Lesson Note, Planning and Sample Lesson Note

Definition of Lesson Notes

Teaching without a Lesson plan is like going on a journey not knowing where you are going.

The lesson plan is central to effective curriculum implementation because effective teaching requires you to plan and prepare your lessons. In planning a Lesson, therefore what you are to teach, how to teach, the resources to use and the evaluation strategies should be borne in mind.

Although teachers perform several roles in their day-to-day activities, the fact remains that the subject and classroom situation changes rapidly such that teachers have to change their approach to be in tune with the changes.

This means that the teacher has to be professional, keeping abreast with the innovations in his/her subject teaching approaches.

Importance of Lesson Notes

Preparing for lessons by writing notes of lesson or lesson note is significant to the teacher and the learners in the following ways.

1.         It is a Guide to Lesson Preparation: It makes the teacher to become more familiar with the materials to be taught. While preparing for your lesson, you are opportune to take a number of vital decisions. These decisions include:

  • the most appropriate teaching aids to use;
  • the most suitable teaching methods to adopt and the order in which the learning material is to be presented.

Thus, a lesson note serves as a guide to lesson preparation

2.         It is a Guide to Effective Teaching

Teaching is deemed effective only when it results in the realisation of the set objectives. In order to do this therefore, the set objectives should always be your focus while teaching.

3.         It saves time : Since lesson notes guide the teacher to the relevant points of the lesson, he is saved from beating about the bush. In this way, precious time is saved. It is common to see a teacher who did not plan for his lesson. Such a teacher is unorganised and uncertain in his delivery. At times, he exhausts the time for the lesson when he is half-way into his teaching period. He may keep on wasting time on irrelevant examples and illustrations, and at times digressing. But when you plan for your lesson by writing notes of lesson, all these problems will be minimized.

4.         It saves energy: Lesson notes with relevant points saves the teacher the possibility of digression. It also helps him to conserve some energy. In fact, if you fail to prepare for your lesson, you may run the risk of talking too much on irrelevant things and at the end you develop headache. But when you are armed with a lesson note, you talk to the point and come out strong

5.         It serves as a reminder: It is human to forget, but with the lesson note on hand, you can easily look up for the information you could have forgotten. This is often easy to do because the lesson note is skeletal or sketchy with the main points or procedures such that they can be seen at a glance. However, you must not form the habit of always looking into your lesson note. Otherwise, students may develop bad impression about you.

PARTS OF A LESSON NOTE

Generally, the following are some of the features common to most lessen notes.

Subject and topic

Without a topic, the teacher would have nothing to teach as he cannot go on discussing the entire subject while A subject refers to the broad field of study such as Civic Education a topic refers to a component of the subject such as Drug Abuse. You should note that any topic selected for teaching should be clearly and categorically stated to avoid vagueness.

Description of pupils

Since the lesson is going to be centered around the learners, you should take time to describe the level or category of learners whom the lesson is meant for. This helps in determining the pupils’ problems, needs, interests, and capabilities as bases for effective teaching. The information needed includes:

  • Class: e.g. SS2
  • Average Age: 14

Duration of the lesson

This refers to the length of time allocated to the lesson as the time-table. This could be 30 or 40 minutes. This knowledge is important because you are expected to plan for what you can accomplish or finish within the limited time. It is embarrassing to the next teacher and disruptive to the next subject if you teach into the next lesson period allocated for another subject It is worse still if you cannot accomplish your lesson objectives before the time elapses.

Teaching aids

These are the resource materials to he used to facilitate the attainment of the lesson objectives. They could be used for illustration or demonstration of processes or concepts in the lesson. For example, measuring cylinders used to measure liquids in Chemistry lab, etc Not only should the teaching aids to be used be mentioned in the lesson note, they should be briefly described in terms of the composition and the purpose they are to serve. In fact, for teaching aids to be of any worth, they should be relevant to the topic and level of the learners: attractive, simple, capable of easy usage, and readily available.

Above all, they should be used at the appropriate time.

Instructional and behavioural objectives

These are the specific tasks or behaviours you want the pupils to perform or demonstrate immediately after the lesson as evidence that learning has taken place. These include knowledge of some facts or concepts or the application of some principles or skills. The objectives are to be stated in terms of pupils’ behaviour and in such a way that they can he evaluated. To facilitate this, you are advised to use such action verbs as to name, identify, mention, explain, discuss, describe, distinguish, calculate, arrange, defend, criticise and so on. You should avoid using such words as know, feel, understand and so on. These are nebulous or vague

Pupils’ previous knowledge or entry behaviour

It is generally accepted that learning cannot be built without a foundation. This foundation could be what a child has learnt or known before, his maturity and readiness, or existing ability and willingness to learn. Therefore, you must seek to base your lesson on the pupils’ previous knowledge, which is relevant to the present task to be performed. The previous knowledge may arise from the last lesson(s) taught. It may derive from pupils’ informal experiences such as the television, newspapers, radio, church or social activities, peer group activities, buying and selling in the market, and so on. This is usually stated in the form of aids.

Summary

As soon as you finish presenting the instructional materials, you are required to recap or make a brief summary of the important points you want the pupils to always remember in the lesson. This is often regarded as the skeletal note which should be adequate enough to make sense.

Evaluation

This aspect relates to the procedures to be adopted in determining the extent to which the stated objectives have been attained. These procedures or techniques depend on the type of behavioural objective. They may take the form of oral-questioning and answers; drawing, arranging, selecting labelling, reciting, and so on. Evaluation is necessary as a way of determining the adequacy of every activity in the lesson

Assignment

Perhaps, the last part of the lesson note is a statement of what tasks the pupils would perform on their own after the lesson. They could be take-home assignment, enquiry or collection of specimens such as grass-hoppers feathers, fruits, and so on.