Write Better Literacy Lesson Plans Faster

Burhele, Reunion, September 22, 2008 –(PR.com)– LessonWriter is a new, free website that aims to assist teachers by analyzing readings and creating lesson plans for teachers. It was designed by an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and is free to the public. The user-friendly website allows teachers to cut and paste electronic readings into a field, then analyzes grammatical and lexical structures and guides teachers through the steps to create a customized lesson plan. The software analyzes the discourse of the reading to isolate vocabulary and grammar. It then provides definitions and contextualized examples of vocabulary. Research has shown that contextualized grammar and vocabulary instruction improve learner comprehension and retention.

The website also does the analytical and time-consuming work for the teacher by examining the passage’s vocabulary for the presence of prefixes, roots, suffixes; it also categorizes the vocabulary. The teacher has the option of clicking on the most common category and/or the one most needed by his/her students. The same process occurs with the grammar portion lessons. The software identifies the grammatical forms present in the reading, categorizes them grammatically categorizes them, and allows the teacher to select which grammatical feature(s) to emphasize in their lessons plans.

LessonWriter goes even further to help teachers; the software generates several open and close-ended activities for language practice. Comprehension questions can be formatted as short answer, extend response, or multiple choice, so any reading passage at all can be used as part of a test prep course. There is a selection of graphic organizers that teachers can include in their readings as well.

The teacher can view, modify and print the lesson plan for use. Ingeniously, the same lesson can be modified for students with different needs. By re-arranging the exercises and using them in different combinations, a teacher can create literally thousands of versions of a lesson sheet. This website is extremely helpful when preparing content-area lesson plans, because teachers can employ authentic materials, view all the grammatical and lexical components of the reading without doing the analysis personally, and so include explicit literacy instruction in any subject.

Classes and lessons plans are managed, too. LessonWriter makes recommendations on what to teach next for each class, and teachers can always return to previously created lessons for editing or re-use. Lessons are permanently recorded for easy and reliable reporting.

###