Lesson plans! Lesson plans! Can be a blessing and a headache. But the good news is that you get better each time you create one. Check out this great write-up below about how to write a lesson plan for corporate training. I am sure you will learn something helpful.
How to Write a Lesson Plan for Corporate Training
Back in 2017, research data predicted the boom of the global e-learning market, saying it would reach $325 billion by 2025.
2020 is outside, and the black swan known as COVID-19 seems to get this ball rolling: More and more people and corporations choose online education and training, not only because of its comfort and flexibility but also safety.
This trend encourages teachers to adjust to new conditions; most of them start thinking about creating and selling online courses, practicing distance schooling, or earning extra money by planning online lessons for corporate trainers.
But, the catch is that an effective lesson plan for online trainees is not the same as for traditional students.
In this article, we’ll reveal the features and structure of a perfect lesson plan and share actionable tips on how to write a lesson plan for different groups of online learners.
Download Our Free Online Course Outline Templates for 2021
Download the Templates!
What is a Lesson Plan?
A lesson plan refers to a detailed step-by-step guide for a teacher to understand what materials to give to students and how to provide them so students would accomplish their learning goals during the course.
All educators and corporate trainers write lesson plans to ensure that they address the requirements of the curriculum (when in school or university), plan their teaching time effectively, and address student needs based on their prior knowledge and learning style.
When you work in a school or any other educational institution, they may have one general template for teachers to fill in for lesson planning. But when you teach online, you’ll have to come up with those templates on your own, taking into consideration all the critical components we’ll discuss below.
As far as you’ll work with learners in virtual classrooms, you also need to think about how you’ll hold their attention during a lesson and what tricks you’ll use to motivate them to visit your next class and finish the course. (According to statistics, 93% of students give up online courses, and one of the reasons is because of their low-quality lessons!)
The Components of Lesson Plans
So, before you take a seat and start writing, make sure you know and include all the critical components of lesson planning.
They are seven, derived from the Hunter Model (named after Madeline Hunter, an education writer and UCLA professor, who initially developed it).
Learning objectives
Your students will be most motivated and learn best when they know what they are going to learn and why they need this knowledge. So, the first component of your lesson plan will be a specification of learning objectives — goals for your students and takeaways they’ll get after your lesson.
In plain English, it is the answer to the question, “What will my students be able to do after completing my lesson?”
It will allow you to specify clear lesson objectives. Based on them, you’ll understand what lesson model to use, what materials or tasks to give, and how to measure student success for better results.
As a way to make the process of writing your learning objectives more straightforward, feel free to use the strategy that we all know as S.M.A.R.T:
This model is standard for business and startup resources, but it also works in the context of lesson planning. The S.M.A.R.T. criteria suggest you specify the objectives that will be:
This worksheet from Wayne State University will help you specify learning objectives for your every lesson. Just fill it in, answering the questions on behalf of your students: What will my students achieve? How will they know when it’s done? And so on.
Anticipatory set
This component goes first in some lesson plan formats, as it refers to specifying something that will grab the students’ attention so they would get involved and excited about the upcoming lesson. For schools with a healthy environment for education, the anticipatory set becomes a mission; not only they strive to organize it in lessons but in the whole learning process in general.
Anticipatory set refers to a short activity that helps a teacher to draw the students’ attention before the lesson begins. When writing your lesson plan, think about what it could be in your particular case: a question about their prior knowledge, a handout (for online courses, it becomes digital, of course), an example problem, etc.
The idea is to focus student attention on your lesson. So, when thinking about this component of your lesson plan, make sure your anticipation set is:
Also, make sure your anticipatory set will reappear during a lesson, and you’ll refer back to it here and there. It will help students get the point.
Input modeling
This component refers to a lesson procedure. Often prepared as an essay outline, input modeling specifies the list of steps a teacher will follow to present learning materials. So, here you write about how your lesson will progress during your online course session.
What does a teacher need to specify?
In plain English, input modeling is your step-by-step instructions for what you will do through a lesson, from the time students enter a class until the bell (real or virtual) rings.
Checking understanding
For a lesson to be successful, you’ll need to know if students understand what you’re saying. So please include some questions or any other signals in your lesson plan that you’ll use during a lesson to check the students’ understanding.
It can be simple questions such as, “Is everything clear?” or “Should I move forward or back up?”
Or, in the case with online courses, you can try the “answer before we proceed” tactic: for example, add a quiz or mini-exam before the next section. Once you’ve finished explaining the concept, provide students with a survey on the screen: They’ll see a question you’ve just discussed and a few variants of answers to choose. Once done, you continue a lesson.
Guided practice
These are exercises you’ll provide students so that they could demonstrate their grasp of new knowledge under your direct supervision. Consider the tripodal, see-hear-do approach when choosing the practices for this component of your lesson:
Independent practice
These are exercises or materials students will do and examine without the need for your supervision or intervention.
In traditional schools, it’s homework or seatwork assignments. In online courses, it may be homework as well as tests, lists of references and notes for further learning and self-study, actions to practice at home, etc.
No matter what you choose, make sure these exercises are relevant to learning objectives you’ve specified before, and remember to include this independent practice in your lesson plan.
Closure
And finally, here goes the last but not least component to include when writing your lesson plan: a closure. It’s a step when a teacher wraps all the things up, reviewing the main points of the lesson and asks if students have understood everything.
This component is like a concluding part of your essay or book: Think of a series of statements or actions that will help students bring the material together and organize their learning better.
And now that you know all the critical components to have in your lesson plan, let’s go to its overall structure.
The Structure of a Lesson Plan
The top three items to include in your lesson plan are learning objectives, timing, and materials you’ll use. Depending on how much time you have and how many students are in a class, your lesson plans may vary.
The basic structure of a lesson plan is as follows:
Lesson Plans for Corporate Training
When it comes to writing lesson plans for corporate training, a teacher also needs a clear understanding of who their students are. As a rule, corporate training is for business development purposes, and organizations choose it for employees so they would grow the necessary skills. So the better you understand your trainees and their learning styles, the more efficient your lesson plans will be.
With that said, your first and foremost element of a lesson plan for corporate training will be the answer to the question:
“Who are my students?”
It includes their interests, learning styles, — are they visual, auditory, tactile, or a combination? — and any special needs they may require during your lessons. Make sure to know what online software they’ll use to train with you: Its features will allow you to get a better idea of what types of learning materials you’ll be able to use during lessons.
Also, please check if you understand what your corporate students already know. Their prior knowledge of your subject can help to plan lessons by far. Test them before the start of your online course, master class, or webinar to see their level and understand what topics or materials you’ll need to cover.
Based on all the above information in this article, your lesson plan for corporate training may center around the K.I.S.S. model:
So, How to Write a Lesson Plan
Long story short, here goes your step-by-step instruction on how to write a lesson plan:
1) Write down the objective
If wondering how to write a lesson plan objective, think of a statement that would describe what your students will be able to do after completing your course. It needs to be short, simple, and up to a point. Think of it as a thesis statement: Outline the main ideas you want to cover in your lesson.
2) Write a lesson overview
Outline your lesson: what hook you will use to warm-up the students, what big ideas you’ll cover to explain the topic, etc.
3) Schedule your timeline
Break your lesson plan into sections, depending on how much time you have to cover the topic. Therefore you’ll know where you can speed up or slow down to control the process.
And here go some actionable tips on how to prepare for your lesson better:
In a Word
All teachers, no matter if they educate online or offline, prepare lesson plans to make sure their training sessions will run smoothly. Depending on students they teach and the timeline they have on their hands, educators set learning objectives, break the material up into sections, and choose learning activities that will be suitable for each trainee.
When looking for information on how to write a lesson plan, you may find tons of templates available online. Given that the basic format of a lesson plan has been around for years already, you can use those templates once or twice to get a general idea of lesson planning. And yet, you’ll have to adjust them to different classes, different training formats, and different student groups.
It’s critical to be flexible: Trainees are different, and they may respond to the same material differently. As a responsible teacher, you need to consider all the above-described aspects and determine the best format for your lesson plans to fit the students’ needs.
2020 is outside, and the black swan known as COVID-19 seems to get this ball rolling: More and more people and corporations choose online education and training, not only because of its comfort and flexibility but also safety.
This trend encourages teachers to adjust to new conditions; most of them start thinking about creating and selling online courses, practicing distance schooling, or earning extra money by planning online lessons for corporate trainers.
But, the catch is that an effective lesson plan for online trainees is not the same as for traditional students.
In this article, we’ll reveal the features and structure of a perfect lesson plan and share actionable tips on how to write a lesson plan for different groups of online learners.
Download Our Free Online Course Outline Templates for 2021
Download the Templates!
What is a Lesson Plan?
A lesson plan refers to a detailed step-by-step guide for a teacher to understand what materials to give to students and how to provide them so students would accomplish their learning goals during the course.
All educators and corporate trainers write lesson plans to ensure that they address the requirements of the curriculum (when in school or university), plan their teaching time effectively, and address student needs based on their prior knowledge and learning style.
When you work in a school or any other educational institution, they may have one general template for teachers to fill in for lesson planning. But when you teach online, you’ll have to come up with those templates on your own, taking into consideration all the critical components we’ll discuss below.
As far as you’ll work with learners in virtual classrooms, you also need to think about how you’ll hold their attention during a lesson and what tricks you’ll use to motivate them to visit your next class and finish the course. (According to statistics, 93% of students give up online courses, and one of the reasons is because of their low-quality lessons!)
The Components of Lesson Plans
So, before you take a seat and start writing, make sure you know and include all the critical components of lesson planning.
They are seven, derived from the Hunter Model (named after Madeline Hunter, an education writer and UCLA professor, who initially developed it).
Learning objectives
Your students will be most motivated and learn best when they know what they are going to learn and why they need this knowledge. So, the first component of your lesson plan will be a specification of learning objectives — goals for your students and takeaways they’ll get after your lesson.
In plain English, it is the answer to the question, “What will my students be able to do after completing my lesson?”
It will allow you to specify clear lesson objectives. Based on them, you’ll understand what lesson model to use, what materials or tasks to give, and how to measure student success for better results.
As a way to make the process of writing your learning objectives more straightforward, feel free to use the strategy that we all know as S.M.A.R.T:
This model is standard for business and startup resources, but it also works in the context of lesson planning. The S.M.A.R.T. criteria suggest you specify the objectives that will be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable by all students
- Relevant to your students
- Time-based, aligning with your syllabus
This worksheet from Wayne State University will help you specify learning objectives for your every lesson. Just fill it in, answering the questions on behalf of your students: What will my students achieve? How will they know when it’s done? And so on.
Anticipatory set
This component goes first in some lesson plan formats, as it refers to specifying something that will grab the students’ attention so they would get involved and excited about the upcoming lesson. For schools with a healthy environment for education, the anticipatory set becomes a mission; not only they strive to organize it in lessons but in the whole learning process in general.
Anticipatory set refers to a short activity that helps a teacher to draw the students’ attention before the lesson begins. When writing your lesson plan, think about what it could be in your particular case: a question about their prior knowledge, a handout (for online courses, it becomes digital, of course), an example problem, etc.
The idea is to focus student attention on your lesson. So, when thinking about this component of your lesson plan, make sure your anticipation set is:
- relevant to the topic
- connected to the core part of your lesson
- followed by a transparent bridge to the learning objectives
Also, make sure your anticipatory set will reappear during a lesson, and you’ll refer back to it here and there. It will help students get the point.
Input modeling
This component refers to a lesson procedure. Often prepared as an essay outline, input modeling specifies the list of steps a teacher will follow to present learning materials. So, here you write about how your lesson will progress during your online course session.
What does a teacher need to specify?
- How you will introduce the topic to students.
- What materials you will use: a text lecture, videos, presentations, demonstrations, audio, pictures, etc.
- What activities you will initiate during a lesson to involve students and practice their knowledge.
- What real-life scenarios relating to the topic you can use.
- How much time you will spend on every thesis and activity during a lesson.
In plain English, input modeling is your step-by-step instructions for what you will do through a lesson, from the time students enter a class until the bell (real or virtual) rings.
Checking understanding
For a lesson to be successful, you’ll need to know if students understand what you’re saying. So please include some questions or any other signals in your lesson plan that you’ll use during a lesson to check the students’ understanding.
It can be simple questions such as, “Is everything clear?” or “Should I move forward or back up?”
Or, in the case with online courses, you can try the “answer before we proceed” tactic: for example, add a quiz or mini-exam before the next section. Once you’ve finished explaining the concept, provide students with a survey on the screen: They’ll see a question you’ve just discussed and a few variants of answers to choose. Once done, you continue a lesson.
Guided practice
These are exercises you’ll provide students so that they could demonstrate their grasp of new knowledge under your direct supervision. Consider the tripodal, see-hear-do approach when choosing the practices for this component of your lesson:
- See: a visual demonstration of how to do an exercise
- Hear: an audio (or your voice) explanation
- Do: your help while students do a task (you observe how they do it and provide recommendations if needed)
Independent practice
These are exercises or materials students will do and examine without the need for your supervision or intervention.
In traditional schools, it’s homework or seatwork assignments. In online courses, it may be homework as well as tests, lists of references and notes for further learning and self-study, actions to practice at home, etc.
No matter what you choose, make sure these exercises are relevant to learning objectives you’ve specified before, and remember to include this independent practice in your lesson plan.
Closure
And finally, here goes the last but not least component to include when writing your lesson plan: a closure. It’s a step when a teacher wraps all the things up, reviewing the main points of the lesson and asks if students have understood everything.
This component is like a concluding part of your essay or book: Think of a series of statements or actions that will help students bring the material together and organize their learning better.
And now that you know all the critical components to have in your lesson plan, let’s go to its overall structure.
The Structure of a Lesson Plan
The top three items to include in your lesson plan are learning objectives, timing, and materials you’ll use. Depending on how much time you have and how many students are in a class, your lesson plans may vary.
The basic structure of a lesson plan is as follows:
- Warmer (5-7 minutes): Get your students interested in what will happen in the class during a lesson; ask a question, come up with a creative name for your lesson, or provide them with some reviews so that they would get involved in the learning process.
- Presentation (up to 10 minutes): Create the need for students to learn what you are going to present.
- Procedure (the remaining class time): Prepare lesson materials you’ll use with students when learning the topic: digital handouts, videos, visuals, textbooks, some software platforms, etc.
- Practice (10-15 minutes): Think about exercises and other activities your students will practice in the lesson with you, individually, or in groups.
- Review and assessment (5 minutes): Think about how you will finish a lesson; write the takeaways for students to sum up their new knowledge.
Lesson Plans for Corporate Training
When it comes to writing lesson plans for corporate training, a teacher also needs a clear understanding of who their students are. As a rule, corporate training is for business development purposes, and organizations choose it for employees so they would grow the necessary skills. So the better you understand your trainees and their learning styles, the more efficient your lesson plans will be.
With that said, your first and foremost element of a lesson plan for corporate training will be the answer to the question:
“Who are my students?”
It includes their interests, learning styles, — are they visual, auditory, tactile, or a combination? — and any special needs they may require during your lessons. Make sure to know what online software they’ll use to train with you: Its features will allow you to get a better idea of what types of learning materials you’ll be able to use during lessons.
Also, please check if you understand what your corporate students already know. Their prior knowledge of your subject can help to plan lessons by far. Test them before the start of your online course, master class, or webinar to see their level and understand what topics or materials you’ll need to cover.
Based on all the above information in this article, your lesson plan for corporate training may center around the K.I.S.S. model:
- Choose learning objectives, depending on your trainees’ prior knowledge and learning style.
- Draft hooks or mini-lessons for them to get interested in what you’re going to teach.
- Make a list of necessary materials (consider the features of e-learning software you use) and guided/individual practices for
your trainees, according to your timeline. - Choose a few assessment methods for your trainees: quizzes, writing assignments, tests, marketing activities whenever relevant, etc.
So, How to Write a Lesson Plan
Long story short, here goes your step-by-step instruction on how to write a lesson plan:
1) Write down the objective
If wondering how to write a lesson plan objective, think of a statement that would describe what your students will be able to do after completing your course. It needs to be short, simple, and up to a point. Think of it as a thesis statement: Outline the main ideas you want to cover in your lesson.
2) Write a lesson overview
Outline your lesson: what hook you will use to warm-up the students, what big ideas you’ll cover to explain the topic, etc.
3) Schedule your timeline
Break your lesson plan into sections, depending on how much time you have to cover the topic. Therefore you’ll know where you can speed up or slow down to control the process.
And here go some actionable tips on how to prepare for your lesson better:
- Always gather all needed equipment and prepare materials in advance.
- Present material in small steps, providing students with practice after each block of information.
- Remember to review the students’ prior knowledge and do a recap of what you’ve learned with them before.
- Give them clear and detailed explanations.
- Ask questions, check for understanding, involve students in communication. Make sure you interact with all students in your group, and all students in your class participate in the learning process.
- Guide students during their first practice, and do your best to encourage them to practice more.
- Provide feedback. Don’t merely tell a student they are wrong but explain why and what they can do to correct their mistakes
In a Word
All teachers, no matter if they educate online or offline, prepare lesson plans to make sure their training sessions will run smoothly. Depending on students they teach and the timeline they have on their hands, educators set learning objectives, break the material up into sections, and choose learning activities that will be suitable for each trainee.
When looking for information on how to write a lesson plan, you may find tons of templates available online. Given that the basic format of a lesson plan has been around for years already, you can use those templates once or twice to get a general idea of lesson planning. And yet, you’ll have to adjust them to different classes, different training formats, and different student groups.
It’s critical to be flexible: Trainees are different, and they may respond to the same material differently. As a responsible teacher, you need to consider all the above-described aspects and determine the best format for your lesson plans to fit the students’ needs.
Anticipatory Set
The first section sets the stage for the rest of the lesson. Here you communicate what you will be teaching the students, how it fits in with what they have already learned and how it connects to future lessons. This step should also involve a brief activity that captures the students' attention.
Anticipatory Set
Connect with Prior Learning
The teacher shows students a beaker of ice, a flask of water and a blown up balloon. The teacher asks, ''What states of matter do these examples represent?'' The students discuss what they have learned so far about solids, liquids and gases.
Engage Students
The teacher asks the students to predict what will happen when heat is added to the water and to the ice. The teacher places the beaker and flask on Bunsen burners to prove or disprove the students' predictions. Additionally, a balloon may be stretched over the mouth of the flask so that students can observe how the formation of water vapor causes the balloon to expand.
Explain What Students Will Learn
The teacher tells the students that they will be studying changes of state.
Explain What Students Will Do
The teacher tells the students that they will do this by graphing the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water.
Connect to Future Learning
The teacher explains to the students that the class will learn about other planets that do not have liquid water, but liquid methane or carbon dioxide instead.
Anticipatory Set
Connect with Prior Learning
The teacher shows students a beaker of ice, a flask of water and a blown up balloon. The teacher asks, ''What states of matter do these examples represent?'' The students discuss what they have learned so far about solids, liquids and gases.
Engage Students
The teacher asks the students to predict what will happen when heat is added to the water and to the ice. The teacher places the beaker and flask on Bunsen burners to prove or disprove the students' predictions. Additionally, a balloon may be stretched over the mouth of the flask so that students can observe how the formation of water vapor causes the balloon to expand.
Explain What Students Will Learn
The teacher tells the students that they will be studying changes of state.
Explain What Students Will Do
The teacher tells the students that they will do this by graphing the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water.
Connect to Future Learning
The teacher explains to the students that the class will learn about other planets that do not have liquid water, but liquid methane or carbon dioxide instead.
Cite
Vas, Lesley J. “How to Write a Lesson Plan for Corporate Training” LearnWorlds. 15 May 2020. <www.learnworlds.com/how-to-write-a-lesson-plan/> Accessed 07 May 2021
Vas, Lesley J. “How to Write a Lesson Plan for Corporate Training” LearnWorlds. 15 May 2020. <www.learnworlds.com/how-to-write-a-lesson-plan/> Accessed 07 May 2021
