I personally did not enjoy creating a lesson plan through that format. Perhaps I am not all that knowledgeable how to use it effectively. For me there was a lot of different steps and many of them seemed repetitive. For example I felt that I must of talked about the preparatory set up two or three times. It was also a very rigid system that seemed to involve a lot of writing.
I use primarily Backwards by Design but I often have to be flexible as I switch schools every few years moving from country to country. This means having to adapt to different systems and different levels of planning. I find that those that are the most basic and most flexible are the easiest to adapt to.
The STEM system is very in depth and pulls from a variety of ideas like Bloom's Taxonomy and others. This ensures that the lesson will be of the highest educational value and that it employs the latest in educational research. This also means however, that it is a very lengthy and complicated process.
I feel that this is just one way to approach it and it may be effective but that it would take some time to get used to. I am sure with more practice it would become more easy to use for lesson planning.
In short I am glad I do not have to plan like this other than for this course!
I agree with a lot of what you said. I had a difficult time with this plan. I can see the benefits of this format, but there seems to be some redundancy that can be trimmed down. I can see the benefit of something this in-depth being used for a lesson that is going to be more long term, like an ongoing month or semester long project. But it doesn't seem very practical to use for day to day lesson planning. While I may get faster at it the more I use it, I have a feeling that it would just become tedious filling everything out. It would end up being treated more as a chore than a way to really find ways to extend and differentiate my lessons.
ReplyDeleteI also am more comfortable with the backwards design. Even though it is simpler, I feel that I am still able to teach across the curriculum, extend, and differentiate my lessons well. And your right, it is very adaptable.