Lesson Planning Strategies Article. Excerpts below.
If we want students to move beyond simply showing up and memorizing course content to deeply understanding and confidently applying it, we need to apply essential principles for absorbing, retaining, and using new information.
Drawing from learning science models and my own teaching experience, this advice can elevate your sessions to support students’ long-term success.
| 1. Get students’ full attention If we want our students to learn effectively, we need to help them create and maintain mental space for focused learning. One way to do that is to minimize distractions. Try beginning class by inviting students to clear their minds. Simply ask them to close their eyes for a moment and take deep breaths or prompt them to reflect on a question like “What do you need to put aside to participate fully today?” Once students are more present, you’ll want to spark their interest in the day’s topic right away. You can use a provocative statement or headline, a rhetorical question, an interesting statistic, a demonstration, or a quick poll.These opening moments signal to the brain, “Pay attention.” |
| 2. Use what they already know To effectively move information to students’ long-term memory, it’s important to connect learnings to pre-established neural pathways. This helps them make sense of new content more quickly and creates deeper pathways for accessing knowledge later.Questions like “What do you already know about . . .?” or “How have you experienced . . .?” can connect new material to things that are already familiar to students, like past content, readings or cases, their lived experiences, and world events.These connections can deepen comprehension, strengthen recall, and build the neural pathways that make learning last. |
| 3. Get their emotions involved Emotionally charged experiences stick in memory far better than neutral ones. Decades ago, for instance, I took a course called Education in the Nuclear Age. On the first day, the instructor dropped a single metal pellet into a bowl. That pellet, he said, represented how much nuclear weaponry was used during the bombing of Hiroshima. Then, he slowly poured a whole bucket of pellets into the dish. The thunderous sound represented the world’s current nuclear arsenal. I can still remember the rush of emotions I felt. If you remember a similar moment from your education, it’s likely because it triggered some feelings. Storytelling is a great way to weave emotion into your instruction, whether those stories are from you or from guest speakers, media, or the learners themselves. Simulations, case studies, dramatic demonstrations, music, and art also carry emotional weight. |
| 4. Make content manageable As educators, we want to share all the knowledge we can. But to prevent cognitive overload for students, we need to identify what’s essential for mastering course concepts and make optional readings of the rest. Once you’ve done that, turn to class structure. Spacing out content in shorter, more frequent sessions gives students time to absorb and then retrieve information. If longer sessions are necessary, break content into digestible chunks. |
| From passive learning to active understanding We can no longer rely on the richness of our subject matter alone to engage learners. Information is abundant; what’s scarce is meaningful instruction that helps learners connect, remember, and apply it. Integrating proven principles of adult learning and common threads from key instructional models can bridge that gap and lead to deep, lasting understanding. |