Section Three: Lesson Planning Lesson plans can be in different formats: •
Use a lesson plan template or devise your own. A template is available at S:\TEMPLATE\INSRV Templates\Internal Templates but there are many other good examples in the literature.
•
If you are distributing the lesson plan to learners and the sessions are embedded within a module, you may be required to use the School’s template.
See Example 2, p. 100. Whichever format you use, your lesson plan will need to be clear and accessible. The recommendations for the preparation of handouts on pp. 23-24 and the guidelines in Supporting Document 6 pp. 96-97 are also applicable to lesson plans. Where possible, distribute lesson plans prior to the session; this will be essential if any advance preparation is required of learners. There are a number of options: •
Hand them out at the start of an IL programme
•
Hand out plans at the start of each session
•
Ask academic staff to distribute them at an appropriate lecture before the session.
As an alternative to a lesson plan handout, you may wish to use the first few slides of your PowerPoint presentations for the purposes outlined above. It is good practice to distribute a handout of the presentation.
Preparing instructor notes Preparing good instructor notes is an important element of your planning. They should provide a practical framework for the session and will assist you during delivery. They can also enable a colleague to deliver a session in your absence. Instructor notes should include two elements: •
Information on the session content: i.e. the core points including examples to be used in demonstrations
•
Information on the process by which that content is to be delivered: for example, whether the content is to be delivered only by the instructor (instructor-led learning) or through the instructor asking the group questions and developing the content through the responses (student-focused learning). Will the questions be put to the whole group (global questioning) or to named individuals in turn (specific questioning)?
Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching: July 2009
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