Lesson Planning

Finished up lesson plans for next week and I've been thinking about planning and how you know its effective. There's no reason not to plan. There's no reason not to put a lot of effort in planning. In my estimation it is one of the most important parts of the job.
I mean as you plan you can begin to work through materials and see if the activities and events you are planning will help or hinder student learning. However one of the wild things about planning is no matter how much you do it, there are still times when lessons fall flat.
Yet, that's a part of planning too. When a lesson plan falls flat it's our job to go back and see why that was and what can be done to do better the next time. The UCA reflection form has a part that talks about if you were going to teach this same lesson to the same students what would you do differently?
I think that's something that needs to be done each day. I have some lessons that are upcoming and I was trying to find interesting ways to assess their learning. I knew I didn't want to do a traditional assessment that day because I wouldn't have the time. What I was thinking was to have students trade notes that they took during class and look over them in pairs comparing notes to see what they had missed or what could be added. Not sure how it'll go over but I thought at the end they could fill out a rubric concerning how each other did. Not sure just a thought.

More to come......