The Scrambled Structure Behind Appealing and Successful Lesson Plans
One of the most dreaded activities teachers face (besides dealing with the soured stomach spewage of a sick student) is sitting down and writing effective and engaging lesson plans.
This is even more difficult if you’re an Orange teacher who instinctively avoids copious amounts of paperwork. But many Gold administrators insist that lesson plans need to be carefully written and followed, and since they set the rules and expectations, if you want to keep your job you humbly put your head down, decide on your learning objectives, and build a plan that tries to move students from one plateau to another.
This chore becomes even more challenging when we accept the fact that Blue, Gold, Green, and Orange students each have different preferences for learning information. And being insightful teachers, it becomes our responsibility to serve up lessons in ways that appeal to their appetites; otherwise they’ll turn up their noses in disgust and leave the table. We reason that in order to be healthy, wealthy, and wise people, they need to digest what we have to offer, otherwise they’ll binge on something with dubious quality, or fill-up on something devoid of nutritional value.
Fortunately, turning our lessons into something that appeals to all four temperaments isn’t that hard to do. Especially if you are willing to get HIPA deep into lesson plans!
HIPA
HIPA is an acronym for hook, instruct, practice, and assess. These are the four components that, when used properly, help make lesson plans irresistibly appealing to Blue, Gold, Green, and Orange students.
In any given lesson designed around the HIPA model, you need to start with an anticipatory hook. That gets both you and your students involved in the process and connected with the content. Next, you slide in some direct instruction that gives students the step-by-step knowledge they need to know. This is followed with a practice session on the material to give them opportunities to demonstrate or apply their knowledge in a safe and non-graded way. Finally, you arrive at the time to assess if they have learned the basics enough to regurgitate it or demonstrate competency.
When planning using the HIPA model, it is common to get trapped into thinking that you can use (or only need) one of each element in a thoughtful plan; i.e. one hook, one instruct, one practice, and one assess. Don’t be fooled! An engaging lesson may include only one occurrence of each element, but more often than not it does not. In fact, following the same sequence repeatedly also makes your lessons unappealing, not to mention boring and monotonous.
No, the secret formula to an irresistible and appealing lesson plan is to shake it up a little and give your HIPA a little scramble. Maybe you start with a hook that appeals to Blues, then provide a little instruction that appeals to Greens, then throw out another hook to engage the Oranges, then do a little Gold practice, chased up by some Blue instruction, then a round of Green practice, and finally wrap it up with an Orange assessment.
An Example
Let’s look at the complex skill of writing a complete paragraph. In a 45-55 minute lesson on paragraph composition you might include the following steps:
- (H) Read the students a paragraph that is horribly out of order or completely off topic. Ask them to summarize or critique.
- (I) Explain to students the basic constructs of a paragraph, e.g. topic sentence, supporting details. Dissect a paragraph as a class.
- (P) Ask students to find a partner to read paragraphs and locate the topic sentences and supporting details.
- (A) Quickly assess understanding by checking work as a whole group.
- (I) Model how to write a paragraph.
- (P) Ask partners to compose a paragraph together complete with topic sentence and supporting details.
- (A) Ask pairs to read their paragraph to other partners for evaluation and critique.
- (I) Review/Define the editing process.
And so it goes. This complex task requires a more complex plan to get the desired results. The key is making sure you conduct activities that appeal to all four temperaments at various times throughout the lesson. You may find the need to have several hooks, instruction sessions, practice sessions, and assessments.
When all four HIPA elements are scrambled together in various quantities and flavors, your lesson plans will become far more appetizing and delicious to the taste of your students, who will consume them with gusto. Your classroom may then become their favorite hangout and the successes and scores of your students will skyrocket.