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Standard 3: Planning
In what ways does the student teacher:

• convert ideas and materials into teachable lessons? Into larger units? Are there clear objective and themes?
• prepare focused, thorough, sequenced lesson plans? Does the lesson help students to see connections with previous material and their prior knowledge?
• prepare a variety of learning activities chosen to accommodate different levels of prior knowledge and learning styles?
• design lessons to accommodate individual differences (developmental, language, cultural background, learning style or disability)? Does the student teacher use resource personnel to help with this planning?
• make his/her plans clear to the students? Does the student teacher use meta-language to aid students in understanding the purpose of activities? Does the student teacher relate individual lessons to the larger curriculum?
• use written plans? Are these usually an accurate guide to what actually happens in class?
• encourage learners to see, question, analyze and interpret concepts from multiple perspectives?
• prepare for active engagement of students throughout the lesson?
• consciously determine how s/he will know if students are on task/on target with the lesson?
• prepare a variety of communication strategies (modeling, questioning, counter-examples, etc.) in his/her planning?
• incorporate technology, where appropriate, in his her planning?
• design lesson plans that reflect an understanding of how students learn — how students construct knowledge, acquire skills, develop habits of mind, etc.?

My planning improved significantly this semester, mostly because of my near-complete adoption of the mini-lesson format. Though I had seen the mini-lesson plans and we had talked about mini-lessons relentlessly, the format didn't solidify in my mind as something truly different. In the beginning of the year, it was simply the plan I used if I wasn't planning a lesson that fit one of our other two templates (math/science or reading).
 
Taking on the mini-lesson format essentially required me to check off many of the individual bullet points listed in this standard as components of each lesson I planned. My math teaching, in particular, elucidated the mini-lesson format for me. By design, I’d begin the lesson with a sentence or two connecting to the previous lesson to activate prior knowledge, followed by an explicit statement of the lesson objective phrased as, "Today I'm going to teach you…." Next I quickly demonstrate the day’s learning, check for understanding with a turn-and-talk or other interactive response, then send them off to “do it.” (After, and this was critical for me, calling on someone to repeat back to me and the class what it was they were about to go off and do.)
 
Since I taught math five days per week, I had ample opportunity to explore this idea of linking many mini-lessons together by making a direct connection to the previous day's learning. Roughly, what was the teaching point yesterday, would be the connection today.

I also struggled with the lesson plan format laid out by the MAT program, always getting wrapped up in formatting and struggling to follow the progression of the lesson. After a discussion with my mentor teacher, I began to write my lesson plans in a more linear, almost list-like form, which I found far easier to write and to follow.