Teaching Planning - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 211

Activity 90: A Comprehensive Teaching Planning of a Study Unit
The objective of this activity is to let each student in the MTCS course delve
into the details of the actual construction of a teaching plan for a full study
unit. Specifically, each student chooses a topic from the high school curricu-
lum, analyzes it, and plans a study unit for it. As can be seen, in addition to
practicing teaching planning, it enables the students in the MTCS course to
express knowledge related to different topics studied in the course as well as
in other courses. Since it is a comprehensive activity, it can be served as a full-
semester/term summary work that should be carried out during a long period
of time (Ragonis and Hazzan 2008 ).
It is recommended that the course instructor leads the students to choose
different computer science topics for this work and to publish these works in
the course website so that all the students could benefit from their colleagues'
work. It is also important that the course instructor guide the students during
their work since they may face dilemmas and take decisions. The instructor's
feedback, based on his or her own experience and knowledge, can support the
students in this work preparation process as well as in their general profes-
sional development.
The final work that the students submit should include the following
sections:
1. Concepts and contents to be taught.
2. Difficulties expected to be encountered by learners when learning the
selected topic. This part should be based on at least one research paper that
addresses the topic.
3. A high-level division of the topic into lessons, specifying the recom-
mended teaching sequence.
4. Designing a full lesson plan for two consecutive lessons, specifying the
pedagogical principles that should guide the teaching process. The two
detailed lesson plans should include the following components:
− Full lesson plan, presenting the lesson's objectives and the lesson open-
ing, development, and ending
− Description of the activities/questions/tasks/exercises, etc. included in
the lesson
− Description of the teaching methods to be used in the lesson, e.g., fron-
tal teaching, working in small groups, individual learning, investigative
and discovery activity, games, class discussions, etc.
− Description of the teaching aids to be used in the lesson, for example,
overhead projector, posters, models, computer, simulations, animations,
and the computerized learning environment
− Suggestions for learners' evaluation after the two lessons, solutions of
the evaluation tasks, and an evaluating rubric for the task evaluation
(see Chap. 10)