LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE BARRIERS

  1. The process of completing a lesson plan for the first time was very time consuming with teachers reporting on the post-survey times ranging from 30 minutes to 4 hours.

    • “I spent about an hour figuring everything out then another 30 minutes to build the lesson and search for materials.”

    • “It took me about an hour, but if I were new to technology, lesson planning, or identifying high quality instructional materials, it would have taken me much longer.”

  2. A few teachers wanted to make the .pdf version of the lesson plan itself more dynamic, including the ability to insert images. For example, teachers who used hand-written flow charts or similar images, to illustrate a teaching method or what student work should look, wanted to be able to post a photo of it.  To the extent that this is an option already through the “attach resources” button, teachers did not notice the paperclip, because it was a part of the “Find resource” button, so it blended together and didn’t look like a separate option.

    • “Even if I attach a picture to my Pango, it translates to text on the pdf. I can’t use or view the image except [within] Pango, and then there are extra steps.”

  3. For some teachers, having the sections pre-filled with section titles was a barrier because they were not relevant to their preferred section titles, and they didn’t notice or know how to change the section titles.

    • “When making a lesson plan, having an option to add a ‘Closing Activity’ box would be great. There should be a ‘Check for Understanding’ section.”

    • “Add a section called ‘Most Common Mistakes’ highlighting misconceptions.”

  4. Elementary teachers, in particular, wanted a way to create a lesson plan that could be broken up into small groups or different days of the week. Since teachers often have small groups that have different instructions, they wanted a way to differentiate that more easily on the lesson plan template.

    • “I wanted to create lessons for small group instruction, but I had to create units instead which was time consuming and frustrating.”