Planning Computing learning and teaching - A Practical Guide to Teaching Computing and ICT in the Secondary School - page 54

PLANNING FOR COURSEWORK AND PROJECTS
You have to plan just as much for a good coursework or project lesson as for any
other lesson, and you need to monitor the pupils' progress and keep careful records.
This can help avoid any panic as the coursework or project submission date
approaches. The temptation to just let them 'come in and get on with it' must be
resisted. Pupils can only 'get on with it' if they know what to get on with, and how
to do so. The experienced teachers with whom you work may not appear to
subscribe to this maxim, but you will find that careful planning and communication
with pupils for whom they have responsibility has occurred long before you take
over their classes. You must plan coursework and project lessons just as carefully
as those in which you are demonstrating and explaining new ideas, so that you are
clear about expectations and can remind pupils about them.
Here is some advice concerning the planning of coursework and project activities:

1 Start with a medium-term plan: what have they got to do and by when?

2 Make sure you and they know the criteria used for assessing the coursework.

3 Break the coursework/project down into suitable sections and set, share and

use deadlines for each section. This is critical. If you do not set, share and
keep to deadlines, pupils will fall behind, and you will not know until it is
too late.

4 Work with the pupils to identify the skills, knowledge and understanding

they need to have for each piece of work, and plan to revise this if necessary.

5 Each pupil should have and know their individual targets for each lesson,

related to their ability.

6 Use a simple system for keeping records of progress and targets.

A common strategy used to support coursework/project planning is to display
deadlines and timelines clearly in the room, and to send the dates to parents and
others. Parts of an individual lesson could involve checking that pupils know
their targets at the start of the lesson, and possibly introducing a little theory or
reinforcing a concept, setting them on task, monitoring their individual progress
against their targets (helping or emphasising where necessary), and finishing by
rechecking progress and sharing good practice with the whole class. Look at the
Key Stage 4 Example Lesson Plan in Appendix A .

Task 2.5

Producing a lesson plan
1 Having read the chapter, produce a lesson plan for the lesson in the
scenario described earlier in Task 2.1 .
2 Apply the 21 key questions listed above. Could you improve on these?
How?

3 Look at your own current plan, and at the examples provided in Appendix

A , and then produce a lesson plan template for yourself.

REFERENCES
Capel, S., Leask, M. and Turner, T. (eds.) (2013) Learning to Teach in the Secondary
School , 6th edition, London: RoutledgeFalmer.