When I look at the Molloy
lesson plan, the first I think of is its very detailed but also a little bit
excessive. I remember when I started at Molloy, I had classmates who told me to
be prepared regarding the Molloy Lesson plan. After doing my first lesson plan
last Spring in my first semester here I quickly found out how right they were.
I was originally overwhelmed when I first saw it. I never knew a lesson plan
had to require so much detail, I ended up attending the zoom workshop that
semester that showed us how to use and write up a lesson plan using the Molloy
template. The workshop definitely helped me in regard to creating and
developing my lessons in the Molloy template however I still feel stressed and
a bit overwhelmed every time I am required to do one. Generally, now, I break
it up and work on it over the course of a few days, to limit my stress and
truly be able to construct a solid lesson plan. I also have taken some relief
when talking to my colleagues in Cold Spring Harbor who assured me in my career,
I'll never have to use a template so detailed as the Molloy one to develop
lesson plans. A few of them have told me that if they had to create lesson
plans using the Molloy template, they would never been able to get anything
else done, as they would be spending all of their time developing lesson plans
around the Molloy template. Knowing that I won't have to use this template once
my graduate program is finished has eased my stress quite a bit.
An issue I have always seemed to have so far working on lesson plans
is I seem to have a habit of doing a bit of overload in my lesson plans.
I remember in my first semester
working with Dr. G, she kindly told me “Jay, you seem to have excellent skill
in developing very good unit plans”. She was a big help in showing me ways on
how to break down, and not overload to develop a standard lesson and not a
unit. However, I still have seemed to add a bit too much into my lesson plans
and seem to add too many activities and ideas into my lesson plans that end up
having them exceed a standard 40 minute lesson. In my opinion I think a major
reason why I seem to do this is because of the way I was taught in high school.
When I attended Kings Park, we had block scheduling which meant we had our
classes every other day for 80 minutes. So instead of having 8 periods a day
that were 40 minutes each, we only had 4 periods a day at 80 minutes each. I
was used to longer lessons as I only saw my teachers every other day. I think
being taught like that has influenced how I construct lesson plans as I seem to
be developing plans that expand beyond 40 minutes.
When looking at the Molloy lesson plan, the one part that I have always had issue in doing
correctly has been the instructional objective. For some reason I never seem to
do it correctly. I always seem to give an overview of what will happen in the
lesson rather than what the lesson is trying to accomplish and how it will be
done. Every time, I have submitted a lesson plan at Molloy I have always
had to correct the instructional objective. I’m hoping, I will be able to be
shown this semester how to do it properly so it is no longer an issue for me
going forward into my student teaching next semester.
