Customizing Your Lesson Plan

Although instructors have great training resources at their disposal, they still need to prepare for teaching by customizing their lesson plans. When you mark up the instructor guide with good questions or ideas for alternative activities or insert copies of job aids or handouts you have created, you are, in a sense, making the course your own. You can refer to: Tool and Techniques for information on a wide range of instructional techniques and strategies, practice activities, assessment methods and tools, and ideas you can use to customize the lesson plan. You can also add content with references to local conditions or issues to increase the relevance of the course.

While instructors need to cover all the technical content in a course and use the provided instructor guide and visuals, you can adapt the instructional strategies to meet the needs of the participants. For instance, if a specific group of participants is hesitant to join in the class discussions, you can switch to small group activities to encourage their participation. Or, if you are pressed for time and you know that the participants already have strong backgrounds in content in one unit, you can find a different way to present what is review material without as much time on each of the slides in the unit.

Steps for Planning an Excellent Training Session. Process chart: Step 1: participants’ needs. Step 2: outcomes, step 3: opening, step 4: learning strategies, step 5: knowledge checks, step 6: conclusion, step 7: timeline.

Source: NHI (2018).

Figure 15: Steps for Planning an Excellent Training Session

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The benefits to customizing the lesson plan include:

  • Ownership of the material: If you have taken the time to customize your lesson plan, you will have a better sense of ownership of the material. Based on the instructional experience and your individual teaching style, you are free to choose the specific teaching methods, illustrative examples, or practice activities that meet the participants’ learning needs.
  • Grasp of the delivery: As you review and make notes in the instructor guide, you will become more familiar with the material and the options for delivery. The process helps to create a more intimate relationship with the content. The experience will help you project more confidence and personal experience when you teach.
  • Self-Awareness: When you customize the course lesson plan, consider how you will deliver the content. It is important to recognize that the slides are not your script and that they are just visual aids to help reinforce your training delivery. It will help you think ahead regarding what you are going to say, do, and ask participants. Thinking about this in advance will help you become more self-aware as an instructor. It will also push you to assess what your strengths are as an instructor.
    • Are you effective at asking thought-provoking questions? Then brainstorm interesting questions in advance to help learners think through problems together with you.
    • Do you have great examples to enhance the content? Use them.
    • Can you think of an interesting scenario to role-play? Plan it out in advance.

The lesson plan customization process forces you to think about the flow of the training session. It also gives you a chance to consider if there are other ways for you to explain and sequence the content. You might choose to follow the sequence of slides, but if a different sequence makes more sense for your approach to the content, you are free to change the order of the slides. If you change the slide order, remember to let participants know so they can follow along in their workbooks.

It is important to remember that a lesson plan is a living document. Not every activity or technique works the same with every audience. But keep experimenting with your delivery. Make a note when things go well, as well as ideas for improvement when things don’t go as planned. If you review and update the lesson plan regularly, you will eventually figure out a range of effective teaching approaches.

The following sections in this chapter will lead you through the 7-step process that experienced instructors use to plan an excellent training session (figure 15). If you are an inexperienced instructor or new to lesson planning, you can start small and customize one unit at a time. If you are more familiar with the process, you can take a hard look at your delivery and the content of an entire you. You can use the Action Plan at the bottom of this page to help you customize a lesson.