Hello again! In the last lesson I gave you a high-level workflow for turning a lesson idea into a “good enough” lesson for your course prototype.
Now we’ll explore the first step in that workflow by introducing my one-page lesson plan, which you can “steal” for your own course.
So let’s get right into it.
What the British Army Can Teach You about Course Creation
The British Army is said to have originated the “7Ps” adage – “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance”.
I’ve never been in the army but I certainly agree with the sentiment. A little planning goes a long way.
We already know your course won’t be perfect right out of the date. That’s why you’re building a prototype version to test.
But preventable problems with your prototype reflect poorly on you.
After all, your beta testers will expect a few bumps on their journey, but they won’t expect unnecessary detours or entirely missing sections of road.
So you need to create a simple plan to guide your lesson creation efforts.
Fortunately I’ve created a template for you. Let’s see how it’s structured.
The Basic Structure of the Lesson Plan
The lesson plan has three main parts to it.
- 🏁 OUTCOME – What is the learning objective? (i.e., what must the lesson achieve?)
- 🔥 RELEVANCE – Why is this lesson necessary for success? (i.e., what’s the benefit in the context of the course as a whole?)
- 📋 OUTLINE – How will this lesson achieve the outcome? (i.e., what main points must it cover?)
Let’s look at each one in turn, shall we?
1) Outcome
The first thing to clarify is the learning “outcome” or objective. What specifically is this lesson designed to achieve? What does success look like?
Here’s a simple way to think about this…
The “job” of any lesson is giving students a better understanding of something important.
For example, your lesson could help students understand:
- what something is (concept, model, etc.)
- how something is done (method, strategy, etc.)
- how something works (system, process, etc.)
- why something is important (reasons, arguments, etc.)
- why something is true (facts, evidence, etc.)
The good news is that you should already have done most of the work on your outcome whether you realise it or not.
Your lesson title should have the outcome, or some version of it, baked in. Going back further, whatever you called the learning chunk of work the lesson originated from should be relevant too.
At the risk of falling down a self-referential rabbit hole, let’s use this lesson you’re studying right now as an example.
In my cascade, I had an entry called “LEARN: How to plan a lesson upfront”. The lesson title, as you already know, is “Steal This One-Page Lesson Plan”.
Here’s what I wrote for my lesson outcome:
“OUTCOME: Students will understand the value of planning lessons in advance and learn the three-part structure of my recommended lesson plan.”
You can be the judge of whether this lesson achieves this outcome, but at least you know my intentions!
2) Relevance
The next part of the plan describes the lesson’s relevance. In other words, why is the lesson and its outcome important to the success of the course as a whole?
Another way to look at it is what’s the benefit to the student of completing the lesson?
Because if your lesson doesn’t have a clear benefit, students might wonder why they should spend their valuable time on it.
What does the outcome make possible for the student? Or to flip it, what are the implications of not achieving the outcome?
Using this lesson as an example again, here’s what I wrote for why the lesson is relevant:
“RELEVANCE: Students who understand why planning is important will be less likely to skip it. Also, those who understand how the lesson plan works will be more likely to use it correctly and be able to create better lessons more easily.”
3) Outline
The first two parts of the lesson plan help you to establish the context for the lesson and set a clear direction. They’re like your lesson’s North Star.
This third part asks you to create an outline: a high-level summary of the main points that your lesson must include.
This usually requires a bit more thought, but don’t worry, it’s thinking that needs to happen to create your lesson anyway. We’re just doing it a little earlier.
The goal is breaking down the journey to that learning outcome into a handful of one-sentence bullet points. In fact, 3 - 7 points is the magic range again.
It’s a bit like creating an elevator pitch for your lesson. If you had just 30 seconds to give someone an overview of what you’d teach, what would you say?
For give you a quick example, here’s my outline for this lesson:
- Lesson creation is easier if you do some upfront planning
- Completing my one-page lesson plan will put you on the right track
- “Outcome” describes the learning objective for the lesson
- “Relevance” explains why the outcome is important (a.k.a. the benefit)
- “Outline” shows the main (3-7) points the lesson will cover
As a quick exercise, looking at this outline do you think it lines up with the outcome statement I shared?
“OUTCOME: Students will understand the value of planning lessons in advance and learn the three-part structure of my recommended lesson plan.”
Outlining is a skill in itself so we’ll explore that in more detail in the next lesson.
Ready to Move On?
As far as this lesson is concerned though, we’re basically done!
You should now have a good grasp of the one-page lesson plan and how it’s used.
Yes, completing this for each lesson will take you a little extra time upfront, but I’m confident it’s time you’ll win back (plus more!) later in the process.
By the way, before you start the next lesson, make sure you check out the resources section below to see some examples of the one-page template in use.
See you shortly!