If we are to work toward a truly flexible classroom that meets the needs of all of our students, we not only need to find the correct ways to incorporate technology in our classrooms (see, A Vision for Technological Classrooms for the 21st Century), but we must work toward a focused plan for a 21st century lesson cycle. This lesson cycle will focus not on the material covered, but on the desired student learning outcomes. It must be driven by student success and not by the clock or calendar. Without this well-designed lesson cycle,  any attempt to incorporate meaningful use of technology will likely fail. 

All good lesson cycles begin with a focused plan. We must ask the question, “What is our desired student outcome?” More specifically, we need to know exactly what we want students to know when the lesson is complete for that student to have mastered the lesson. This requires the breakdown of learning targets into smaller pieces and putting them in terms students will understand. This defining of learning targets must occur before instructional materials and lesson delivery are considered. One effective way to break these standards into student-friendly, smaller pieces is through guiding questions (see, Using Guiding Questions), but whatever method is used for this, the teacher and student must be clear on the desired outcomes. Breaking down standards requires reading standards by focusing on nouns to find what needs to be learned and verbs to determine the knowledge and skills to be acquired as well as the depth of knowledge. These skills and knowledge may be grouped by unit to later be assessed but the lessons should not be controlled by time but by student learning.

Once learning targets have been defined and put into student-friendly terms, the content and instructional delivery can be considered. It is at this point that content and teaching strategies can be matched to the desired learning outcomes and a plan for lesson delivery can be developed. This plan is then implemented and the lesson taught. Most teachers should stick with a handful of proven, research-based teaching methods while occasionally trying new methods to find those that might be incorporated into the teaching repertoire in the future. Any instructional method used must always have the learning target at the center with the desired students outcomes in mind.

After targeted, student-centered instruction has taken place, student learning must be assessed. It is at this stage of the lesson cycle that many lessons get off track. Assessment is anything that will check students’ understanding of the learning target (see, Quick Assessment and Assessment with Purpose).  This assessment does not need to be long and may be written (such as a quiz or entrance/exit ticket) or accomplished through individual questioning or observation of group collaboration. The method chosen must be planned to identify which students have mastered the objective, which students need quick, in-class intervention to get them on level and which students will need more work. It is this assessment that will determine whether intervention will be needed with the whole class or on an individual basis before moving on.

The final piece of the lesson cycle is to examine the results of the assessment and take action based on the results. The results determine the action. Assessments must be designed in such a way that each student’s mastery of the lesson can be determined and those results must be timely in order to determine when the class as a whole can move on to the next learning target. All lessons center around intervention based on these assessment pieces (see, Intervention Centered Instruction). The assessment might determine that a student mastered the learning target and needed no intervention, that the student would need minimal intervention to master the target or that the student would need more extensive, targeted intervention in small groups or individual pullout. In addition, class success as a whole determines whether additional instruction is needed for the class. 

This planning cycle of breaking down learning targets, planning and implementing instruction, assessing, examining results and taking action is repeated for each learning target in a unit and for the unit as a whole following a unit assessment. Using this process allows the lesson cycle to remain focused on student learning and results to determine pacing. Only when this cycle is firmly in place should the possibility of using technology as part of the instruction and assessment process be considered. A 21st century, research-based student learning cycle is the key to any effective lesson planning cycle.