3.1 The Instructional Sequence

Once you have considered the needs of students in your class, have identified your goal and lesson objectives, and have considered how you would like to assess students’ performance in reaching the lesson objectives, you are ready to work on the instructional sequence.

The instructional sequence is a plan for the order of the activities you will use to present content and the activities with which you will engage your students with content.

As you work on the instructional sequence, you will be using information you gathered and included in your pre-instructional document to make decisions about the order and the activities you select for your lesson. Remember, that the work of lesson planning is a circular process, not a linear one. In other words, you need not complete all components of the pre-instructional planning document before beginning to work on the instructional sequence. You may find it helpful to move back and forth between the documents as you consider the standards, content, and the strengths, needs, and interests of your students.

Alignment

In making decisions about the lesson sequence, keep in mind that the tasks you select should lead to the learning outcomes you identified (i.e. goals, standards, and objectives). In other words, the lesson activities should be aligned with the objectives and assessments you have identified.  The alignment is like a flow chart from the Minnesota standard - benchmark - objective - assessment pieces.

Alignment of lesson activities provides clarity and also supports student learning, which is what your lesson is all about.

Scaffolding

Remember the requisite skills your students will need in order to reach the lesson objective; these will need to be taught too. Lesson activities should move from simple to complex. They should move from activities in which you are assisting/guiding students to complete, to activities that students will complete on their own or in collaborative groups. The lesson activities should also build on each other and progress in such a way so as to move students from prior knowledge to

• higher levels of thinking,
• engagement with content,
• deeper meaning, and
• application of content.To do these things, plan intentionally how you will link content to prior knowledge and assist students in making connections. Consider how you will explain, model, demonstrate, and assist students to move from simple to more complex thinking around the content you are presenting. Think about the instructional strategies that may be specific to your content area as well as general best-practice pedagogical strategies for scaffolding concepts and content. As you move through your sequence of planned activities you will be observing students’ reactions, listening to their responses, and reviewing the work they complete. Your use of formative assessments throughout the lesson will help you to gauge students’ understanding. As you monitor their progress based on your assessments, you may choose to slow down, move ahead, reteach, or move more quickly through material you feel students already understand.  While teaching the lesson it is best to think through multiple possibilities in the planning stage about what you will be doing and what students will be doing at each step along the way. Planning for transitions will also be very important as you think about how you will move students from one activity to the next to maximize use of time and, most importantly, how you will use the lesson activities to assist students in reaching the lesson objectives.

Scripting

Your level of scripting within your instructional sequence may vary. Your course instructor may ask you to script all or part of a lesson plan. At other times, you may choose to script all or part of a lesson plan to improve your skills. The more comfortable and confident you become in writing lesson plans and the more comfortable and confident you become in presenting your lessons may affect how much you are asked to script, or how much you choose to script when the choice is up to you. Follow the instructions of your course instructors and university supervisors when deciding how much to script and what components of the lesson plan to script. It may be helpful to script the "higher level questions" you will be asking the students during the lesson.

Lesson Example: