The history of lesson planning began in the 4th century when Christian educators developed the catechismal method to reeducate converted adults and teach children. This involved comprehensive texts covering questions and answers for students to memorize. In the 19th century, educators like Horace Mann and Edward Sheldon developed new approaches including age-specific classes and field trips. In the late 19th century, as teacher training became academic, educators developed standardized lesson plans like the 5-step Herbartian model and 4-step 1940s/50s model. In the 1960s, individualized instruction was popularized but behaviorism influenced lesson planning. Madeline Hunter's 7-step model dominated in the 1970s-1990s before criticism

1. History of Lesson Plans

2. Beginning
Lesson planning strategies - Begins in America
in the Fourth Century.
Christian educators faced two problems.
Need to reeducate the adults who had been
converted from paganism to Christianity
At the same time they fostered the rather novel and
controversial idea of teaching children

3. To accomplish this two-fold purpose:
catechismal method of teaching
comprehensive text materials were written that
covered questions in sequential order with detailed
answers.
Students then memorized both the questions and the
appropriate answers with instructional time spent in
one on one recitation.

4. Hoarce Mann, developed normal schools for the
training of teachers
Edward Sheldon discovered Pestolizzean
methods. Some of his innovations included dividing
students into age-specific classes using manipulations,
teaching math by taking field trips, and utilizing class
recitation rather than individual recitation

5. The next major change in lesson planning and
instructional process occurred during the 1880's. When Teacher
College, New York City, merged with Columbia University, teacher
training for the first time became a college academic endeavor.
Professors assigned to the task of teaching teachers
scrambled to discover and create materials appropriate for the
new academic standards.
Historians, not educators, wrote history of education
textbooks. Philosophers, not educators, wrote philosophy of
education textbooks. (It is important to remember that at this time
psychology was still a very young field, so the study of psychology
was not as significant in teacher education as it is now.)

6. Herbart
Based on the Herbartian concept of the mind as an
appreciative mass, his students developed a five-step
lesson plan appropriate for all teachers. It included:
Preparation
Presentation
Association
Generalization
Application

7. Dewey
From 1892 until John Dewey published Democracy in
Education in 1916, this plan of American Herbartianism
dominated American education. It was not just a
possible lesson. It was the lesson plan. Teacher
manuals, plan books, and evaluation instruments were
all organized around the five-step lesson plan.

8. 1940’s and 1950’s
During the 1940's and 1950's, another lesson planning
technique came into vogue structured around a four step
system which included:
Aim
Material
Method
Evaluation

9. Individualization
During the 1960's, individualized instruction
became the buzzword in American education.
Although the idea itself had a rather short life, the
principles of behaviorism in lesson planning had been
planted.

10. Hunter
Madeline Hunter's seven-step lesson plan became
the Bible for educators around the nation.
Veteran teachers learned the structure at in-
service. Education students were taught so much
Madeline Hunter that they dreamed about it at night.
School boards endorsed it, and administrators
demanded it. Every lesson had to be organized on
seven steps.

11. Madeline Hunter’s 7 steps
Anticipatory set
Objectives and purpose
Input
Check for understanding
Modeling, Guided Practices
Independent Practices
Closure

12. During the 1990's, many educators across the
nation have moved away from the Madeline Hunter model
with their reasons focused in two areas.
First, it was misused. Madeline Hunter never
intended for her model to be prescriptive. Her intention
was to describe what she saw good teachers do.
Unfortunately her fans in administration carried in
much further then that and made the Seven Steps of
Mastery Teaching the requirement of all teaching.

13. The other criticism of the Madeline Hunter model
offered by some is that it is too inflexible. It does not
provide opportunities for teacher innovation nor for
student spontaneity. Many educators feel that requiring
teachers to adhere too closely to any lock step model
would squeeze innovation and activities out of the
lesson.

14. This is the status of lesson planning at the turn of
the century. Most educators have seen the fallacies of a
form which demands certain activities, but they
remember the dangers of the open-ended, non-plan
days of progressivism.
Thus, we all experiment, explore, and through trial
and error attempt to discover the next major movement.

15. Memorization
Drawings of Colonial American classrooms provide a
picture of the process. Students sit on their log desks
facing the wall dutifully learning (memorizing word for
word) their lessons while one boy stands facing the
school master seated on a stool holding the stick of
motivation. If the student recites the lesson well, he is
pleasantly rewarded by not being hit by the stick.