Teaching a lesson is not something that a teacher can just pull out of thin air, perhaps one of the most important ingredients for being a successful teacher is having a well thought out and organized plan; whether it be a lesson plan, a unit plan, or a year plan. There have been many different models of teaching throughout the years, and it is still up for debate if there even is a “best method” for teaching. Hellmut Lang states that successful lessons are generally the result of “careful planning for the three major phases of effective lessons set, development and closure” which should all flow seamlessly together.
Today’s modern teacher is expected to have short range and long range lesson plans, but as the new teacher progresses in their career they may come to realize that there is more to planning a lesson than just having a daily lesson plan. According to Barnett, there are five levels a teacher must plan and organize for; lesson plans, unit plans, day plans, weekly timetables and year plans. But there is one that Barnett did not mention; mental planning. Mental planning (also referred to as, reflective thought), essentially, is what happens before the teacher sits down to write his lesson plan, or the rehearsal that goes on in the teachers head before teaching a lesson. But all this teaching has to be filtered through three different domains of learning; cognitive (work of the mind), behavioral (intellectually directed physical skills) and affective (values and attitude).
According to “Learning to Teach” by Arends there are two different planning models, the first is the rational-linear planning model and the second is the nonlinear planning model. In the first example the model goes from Goals to Actions to Outcomes where the nonlinear plan goes from Actions to Outcomes to Goals. In the first model the focus is on the goals and objectives, as the first step in a sequential practice. “Modes of action and specific activities are the selected from...