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Brandon Morris

MUED 376: Choral Music, Materials, & Techniques

Dr. Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy

October 7th, 2020

Reflection: Lesson Planning

Teachers inspire students to become critical thinkers, motivate them to participate within

activities, and reflect on our lives through various lessons. But how do teachers allow us to

engage cognitively within a given class? The answer to that question is lesson planning. Lesson

planning may take hours or days to complete, but the outcomes from creating theses are

extremely rewarding. Each lesson plan will be specifically detailed to what the instructor’s

rehearsal threads and goals are for the students.

From taking a look at the detailed lesson plan that’s on Canvas, it was originally not what

I had pictured a lesson plan to be. The lesson plan was for a rehearsal with the JMU Chorale that

Bridgette was going to teach for Dr. V since she was going to be out of town. Within that

rehearsal, it showed a very detailed script with all the direct instruction that was going to be used

throughout the lesson. This included the activities being done, chunks within the activities to

show the subsections, and the direct instruction for performing said activities and chunks.

After looking over the lesson plan and reviewing, it was time to create my lesson plan for

my practicum sessions. At first, I was a bit confused about how to create the lesson plan but the

more and more I spent time working on creating my own lesson plans the better I would feel

about developing them. Drafting these lesson plans has taught me so much about the value lesson

planning holds within educators. It takes a lot more work than you think to prepare for a class

with specific goals and threads in mind.

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Overall, lesson planning is vital to teaching education in numerous ways. It helps build

the skills and formal instruction techniques for educators to be motivated and inspiring teachers

for their students. Lesson planning has taught me so many things about the field of education that

I hadn’t realized since I began my undergraduate studies. I hope that lesson planning and

continuing to make thorough and extensive lesson plans will continue to teach me things about

education that I haven’t learned yet.