When it comes to lesson planning, many primary school teachers feel overwhelmed. How do you create effective lessons that keep students actively engaged while still focusing on key learning outcomes? If you’re a primary school teacher, then you know how important it is to keep your students immersed in the lesson.This can be a daunting task, especially when you’re trying to cover a lot of material, but it’s not impossible! In this blog post, we will share 6 tips for creating engaging lessons that will keep your students interested and focused on the task at hand!
1. Start with the end in mind
What do you want your students to learn by the end of the lesson? Record this as your lesson outcome or focus. Identify what the children are going to learn, as opposed to what they are going to do. This will enable you to focus your lesson and ensure that all activities are geared towards the intended learning outcome. The Primary Planning Tool includes learning outcomes that are pre-populated and directly taken from the NCCA curriculum, ensuring that plans are curriculum-aligned school wide.
2. Make it interactive
Children learn best when they are actively engaged in the lesson. Incorporate a variety of activities into your lesson plan, such as games, puzzles, role-play, etc. That will allow the children to be actively involved in their learning. Utilising resources for practical and visual tasks will keep them focused and interested. You could also encourage group work as students often learn effectively when they are working together in groups. This allows for social interaction, as well as enhancing teamwork and communication skills – see our previous blogs for inspiration and resources!
3. Keep it structured
Having a lesson plan with a clear trajectory of different stages will help to keep the lesson focused and on track. This does not mean that the lesson has to be rigid and inflexible as we all know that we must adapt as lessons evolve, but having an overview of the content and activities planned will help to ensure that all key points are covered.
4. Reuse previous plans
Repurposing previously used plans can be a real time-saving approach to lesson planning, especially in the primary school setting. Taking inspiration from a successful lesson plan and adapting it to fit your current class can help save you time while providing the opportunity to improve your teaching. The Primary Planning Tool allows teachers to store Long-term and Short-term plans in their Library for use at another stage – simplifying the planning process and making storing and retrieving plans easy!
5. Ensure you are up to speed on prior learning
Ensuring you are caught up on the children’s prior learning will minimise repetition in your lessons and maximize the learning outcomes for each individual child. In addition, being aware of the progression across the school will help you to plan lessons that challenge and engage all learners. The Primary Planning Tool provides a school-wide planning option to ensure that there is no duplication of curriculum objectives across different subjects and class levels.
6. Include holiday-themed/ seasonal activities
Take advantage of holidays and celebrations for themed lessons – for example Poetry Day 2022 – Thursday April 28th – provides an excellent opportunity to get children excited about activities involving poetry, reading and writing. Such occasions can help keep the children interested and motivated to engage in learning activities. Additionally, making the lesson relatable to the students’ everyday lives will help them see how what they are learning is important and useful.
Effective lesson plans are essential for keeping primary school students engaged in their learning. The six tips above are just a starting point, but by following these simple tips, you can create lessons that are both engaging and effective.
Classroom planning doesn’t have to be a daunting task! The Primary Planning Tool simplifies the process by putting the curriculum at your fingertips. The full DES curriculum is pre-populated into the platform, saving you time and hassle in creating Long-term and Short-term plans, so that you can focus your time and energy on teaching! For simple, time-saving planning that is tailored to the NCCA curriculum, be sure to check out the Primary Planning Tool!
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