Lesson Planner app for iPhone and iPad

With well over 50, tried and tested creative ideas to enhance learning and teaching, this app is sure to help you to create powerful learning experiences for your students. Improve and grow your lesson planning techniques with these lesson activity suggestions. Based up on the original Four Part Accelerated Learning Cycle from TEEP, this contains activity ideas that are based on solid foundations for learning and teaching. Many of the activities also offer suggestions as to how you could include ICT to further enhance learning and teaching in the digital age.

HOW TO USE THIS APP
This app has been designed to support teachers who are planning lessons using the TEEP four part lesson plan. Built upon an analogue, key ring style tool developed at Shenley Academy (UK), the app provides teachers with activity ideas for each stage of the four part lesson planning process.

WHAT IS THE FOUR PART LESSON PLAN?
The framework is built from the original idea of the “Accelerated Learning Cycle” and originated from the TEEP (Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Program) in the UK. Check out their website for some brilliant resources, lesson ideas and more information. Accelerated learning is the term that the TEEP model uses to describe the techniques and strategies that we use to actively engage learners in learning. It is based on research of brain function, student motivation and multiple intelligences and provides a platform for life-long learning by promoting the importance of understanding how we learn as much as what we learn. The key ideas of accelerated learning can be briefly summarised as:

• Making connections with prior knowledge and experiences
• Experiencing the content of the curriculum through the senses
• Supporting students to take risks in their learning
• Allowing opportunity for exploratory talk
• Providing students with relevant and useful feedback
• Offering learning experiences that are both pleasurable and memorable
• Regular review of learning

(Taken from http://www.teep.org.uk on 18/10/2011)

WHAT HAPPENS IN EACH PART OF THE LESSON?
The definitions for each stage in the four part plan can be seen below:

• Connect: Make learning personal. Start by connecting to what has been learned before. Involve the whole group, create a learning climate, agree the outcomes and share the Big Picture.
• Activate: Help students familiarise themselves with key information. Make this multisensory, pose questions and engage curiosity. Engage students directly with the problem presented.
• Demonstrate: Give students opportunities to show understanding. Use feedback to fine tune learners’ thinking. Make this a highly interactive student-centered phase and provide educative feedback.
• Consolidate: Reflect on what has been learnt and how. “What do we now know and understand that we didn’t know before? How have we learned? How can we apply our learning elsewhere?”

For more information on the elements of each of the four parts of the Accelerated Learning Cycle visit www.teachertechnologies.com.