The Typical Structure of a Lesson Plan from Gynzy
At Gynzy, we work closely with educational professionals to craft the constantly growing collection of lessons in our Library. These lessons are structured to engage students by drawing on prior knowledge and incorporating fun learning activities, games, and discussions in a digital format.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the typical structure of our standards-aligned lessons.
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Getting Started
Every lesson begins with a concrete “I can” statement to establish what students will learn. These statements are written in student-friendly language to make them more accessible. Next is an introductory activity or prompt that calls on prior knowledge to prepare the student to learn.
For example, in our “What is a timeline?” lesson, students are asked to put a familiar routine into chronological order. This activity can be done by students on an interactive whiteboard or on their personal device and also could serve to start a class discussion.
Development & Instruction
Once prior knowledge has been established, the teacher starts explaining the new concept. How this is done is naturally going to depend on what’s being taught. Our lessons offer plenty of different ways for teachers to scaffold or work through new concepts.
Our lesson on the ancient Roman Republic, for example, offers a simple graphic to show the hierarchy of the social order in ancient Rome. Then, after a description of these four social classes (patricians, plebeians, freedmen, and slaves), students are presented with the same graphic to fill in for themselves and test their knowledge.
In the timeline lesson discussed previously, students are first introduced to the concept of timelines. Next, they discover the parts of a timeline, including the title, dates, and other labels. Then they complete a series of activities interpreting timelines to put their knowledge to use.
Other activities used in this portion of our lessons might include true or false questions, discussion prompts, videos, or matching activities. We are constantly surprised at the inventive ways our authors use our platform to create fun activities, and we invite you to explore them!
Guided Practice Quiz
To help teachers gauge the comprehension of the new topic, each lesson comes with a collection of practice problems. These questions are intended for students to do as a class, though they can also be done in small groups or pairs.
The “Guided Practice” questions and question types are chosen to best reinforce the material covered during the lesson. We aim for 10 guided practice questions per lesson and students get 3 tries to answer each question correctly. Teachers can also show the answer by tapping on the “Answer” button.
To close the lesson, we reiterate the “I can” statement from the title slide and ask students to recall what they learned in the lesson. We then give space for students to solve additional practice problems or complete an extension activity to help further reinforce their understanding.
For example, at the end of the timeline lesson we’ve been discussing, students are asked to apply their knowledge by creating their own timelines. In the ancient Roman Republic lesson, the closing activity involves filling out a graphic that compares the American government to the Roman Republic.
Create Lessons that Fit Your Class
This lesson format has been developed by our own educational professionals in collaboration with our Gynzy Authors, educators who help us craft our pre-made lesson plans. We aim to create lessons that actively utilize the advantages of an interactive whiteboard while recognizing the critical role of the teacher in the classroom.
Most importantly, each Gynzy lesson is fully customizable, so you can always trim the bits you don’t like and add elements so the lesson best suits your classroom environment. Gynzy is here to fill any gaps you might have in your digital learning toolbox!
