Teaching Planning - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 203

In the next steps, each lesson should be planned in detail, as is described in what
follows.

11.2.3 Local Level Perspective: Planning a Lesson

A lesson plan can be described in different levels of depth. Novice computer science
teachers usually need to plan their lessons in detail; after gaining some experience
and building confidence in the fieldwork, lesson plans become less detailed.
A lesson plan should address the following aspects:

1. The lesson's main objective: What is the lesson about? What is its main message
and its main content?
2. The explicit content to be covered in the lesson: Which subtopics are included
within the lesson content? What are the pre-concepts pupils should learn and
understand?
3. The lesson operational targets: What students should learn in the lesson? What
skills should student develop? What concepts should students understand? What
are the operational performances students are expected to gain?
4. The lesson activities: What kind of activities will be included in the class? (e.g., a
trigger, explanations, set of exercises, a game, a group activity, peer assessment,
an inquiry work in the computer lab, etc.)
5. The learning assessment: How will students' understanding will be monitored
during the lesson?
6. Pupils' homework: What homework should a student perform to accomplish the
lesson targets?

In addition, since the teacher knows his or her pupils' learning abilities, as well
as the teaching route they passed together so far, the teacher should also consider
the characteristics of the specific class that is going to learn the specific content.
In other words, in addition to the difficulties and misconception mentioned in the
literature with respect to the said topic, the teacher should be aware of the specific
difficulties that his or her own learners face, and what may help them overcome
these difficulties and improve their understanding. It implies that when a teacher
considers how to vary the teaching methods and class activities employed during
the year, he or she should be aware to what works and what does not work for each
specific class.

11.2.4 Building Concept Understanding in a Spiral

Gradient Manner

In some cases, it is better to build the understanding of a concept in spiral gradient
manner. There are places where we apply this principle quite naturally, for example,
in the case of the concept of modularity. Specifically, when exploring the notion