1. Lesson Plan Essentials
Utilizing Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction To Build Effective Lessons
By Sharon Mahabir

2. Discuss With your table:
What makes a lesson effective?
What do you feel is the most important part of the lesson plan cycle?
Teachers should discuss their experiences with lessons.
Encourage discussion on what types of things should be included in every lesson.
Tables will share orally their thoughts. Record ideas on chart paper.

3. Born in Maine in 1916; died in 2002
About Robert Gagné
Born in Maine in 1916; died in 2002
Began developing his learning theory while serving as Director of the U.S. Air Force Perceptual and Motor Skill Laboratory
Believed that the traditional methods of learning did not aid in improving training results
Taught as a professor at Connecticut College for Women and Penn State University.
Developed 3 key principles that he believed made for more effective instruction:
providing instruction on smaller tasks that lead to a final task
Working to see that each smaller task is mastered
Creating a logical sequence to the smaller tasks to ensure that mastery occurred

4. Robert Gagne’s Theory Five Types of Learning Verbal Information
Intellectual Skills
Cognitive Strategies
Verbal Information—Ability to retrieve stored information
Intellectual Skills--The ability to “distinguish, combine, tabulate, classify, analyze and quantify objects, events, and symbols” (Gredler, 2009)
This is where the majority of learning occurs in schools.
Cognitive Strategies—The ability to develop strategies to aid in one’s learning
Metacognition—thinking about one’s thinking

5. Robert Gagne’s Theory Five Types of Learning Motor Skills Attitude
Think-Pair-Share: Which type of learning do you feel
is the hardest to develop in students?
Motor Skills—Ability to learn and develop a ‘plan’ for carrying out specific sequence of physical movements (Gredler, 2009)
Attitude—Can develop as positive or negative
Determines how likely or unlikely one is to perform a specific task.
Also determines how likely students are to participate within a given subject area (i.e. A student who has a negative attitude towards math)
Teachers will think-pair-share about the type of learning most difficult to develop. Why? What makes it the most difficult?

6. Nine Events of Instruction
What are they?
How do they fit into a lesson design plan?
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7. Nine Events of Instruction
1. Gain your students attention
Provides students with a stimulus to gain their attention
Ask thought-provoking questions
Encourage students to develop questions to ask of each other
Utilize the element of surprise or unknown.
Pose question: “Why is it important to engage students prior to beginning the learning process?”
Ways to gain attention:
YouTube video
Thought-provoking question
Introduce a scenario or problem
Current news event

8. Nine Events of Instruction
2. Inform students of the objectives
Gives students opportunity to understand what they will be expected to learn
State the objectives before the instruction takes place
Why is it important for students to know what they will be expected to learn?
Objectives must include:
What materials will be provided
What cognitive level students will be expected to perform at (knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation)
How will students show mastery of this skill
To what accuracy students will be expected to master stated object
Sample Objective
Given math manipulatives and work mats, the learner will analyze the features of shapes by sorting the given shapes according to attributes with 95% accuracy.
Think-Pair-Share: What needs to be present in a well-written objective?

9. Nine Events of Instruction
3. Stimulate the recall of prior knowledge
This event aids students in making connections to new information by relating it to prior knowledge.
Questions about prior experiences
Relate previous concepts
Activating prior knowledge helps students to make connections to the new information
This can be done by asking questions about a previous concept or experience.
Important to remember that different students will have different prior experiences.
Think-pair-share: Give one example of a method you used to activate prior knowledge.

10. Nine Events of Instruction
4. Present the content
Use of differentiated instructional strategies
Organization in a meaningful way is essential
When utilizing demonstrations, it is important to provide explanations.
Ideas for introducing material include:
Introducing vocabulary
Giving examples
Teaching the content in a variety of ways (lecture, small group work, video, written, demonstration)
Utilize different types of media

11. Nine Events of Instruction
5. Provide learning guidance
Providing learning guidance gives students strategies to help when learning the material
Methods include:
Providing instructional support
Using examples and non-examples
Demonstrate different strategies for learning
Provide necessary instructional support
Use as scaffolds for learning to be used while practicing and learning desired skill
Examples might be hints, visual cues, songs, or rhymes
Use examples and non-examples
Frayer model can be used for key terms; definition, facts/characteristics, examples, non-examples
Demonstrate different strategies for learning
Strategies might include: visualizing, creating concept maps, acting out, utilizing think-pair-share, questioning

12. Nine Events of Instruction
6. Elicit Performance
Guided practice assists students in internalizing the new information.
Ideas for activities that elicit performance
Student collaboration
Higher level questioning
Higher level thinking activities
Utilizing real-world applications
Guided practice
Helps students internalize learning
Gives teachers a chance to observe any misunderstandings students might have of concepts.
Student collaboration allows for deeper understanding of material
Higher level questioning—not yes/no questions, but questions that force students to use analytical skills to develop responses
Higher level thinking activities—those activities that are not simply recalling information
Creating
Analyzing
Comparing/contrasting
Evaluating
Real world applications—gives relevance to students. Concepts and skills that have little relevance to the student often affects his/her attitude about these concepts (and therefore, his/her ability to internalize these skills.)

13. Nine Events of Instruction
7. Provide feedback
Teacher feedback gives students opportunity to correct misconceptions.
Types of Feedback
Confirmatory
Corrective
Remedial
Informative
Analytical
Think-Pair-Share: What type of feedback do you use most often in your class? What are its benefits?
Confirmatory Feedback—Tell the student what he/she did correctly
Corrective Feedback—Tells the student how accurate his/her work was
Remedial Feedback—Guides students in finding the correct answer but does not actually give it to them
Informative Feedback—Gives ways for students to improve performance (not necessarily a correction for an incorrect answer; simply a way to improve)
Analytical Feedback—Gives students suggestions for correcting incorrect responses

14. Nine Events of Instruction
8. Assess performance
Assessment should be based on the objectives set at the beginning of lesson
Assessment aids the teacher in revising the lesson and re-teaching as needed
Types of assessment
Pretest/post-test
Formative Assessment
Summative Assessment
Assessment does not only take place at the end of the lesson. Assessment can and should happen throughout the lesson cycle
Types of assessment
Pretest/Post-test—Allows teachers to see what students already know (to maximize the effectiveness of the lesson) and what they have learned as a result of instruction
Formative Assessment—Formative assessment should occur throughout lesson to gauge which students have mastered the desired skills and which students need further instruction (reteaching). Examples of formative assessment include:
Questioning
Teacher observation
Class discussion
Peer reviews
Quizzes
Summative Assessment—This is an end-of-unit exam that assesses a student’s mastery of the concept. Examples include:
End-of-unit exams
State testing (STAAR)

15. Nine Events of Instruction
9. Enhance retention and transfer to the job
Aids students in truly internalizing the skills learned.
Lateral transfer—ability to apply learning to new situations
In order to enhance lateral transfer, many opportunities must be given to practice skills in a different context.
Utilize skill in a different subject area
Apply skill in a real-life setting

16. Practice
Using Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction, work with your table group to create an effective lesson of your choice.
Explain how you will incorporate each of Gagné’s Nine Events into your lesson cycle.
Table groups work together.
Each table will develop a lesson using all Nine Events
After minutes, groups will share their lessons with the whole group.

17. Conclusion
Ticket Out
Identify one thing you have learned about Gagné and/or his Nine Events of Instruction.
Identify one method/idea that you would like to include in your current lesson plan cycle this year.
Hand out note cards
As an exit ticket, teachers will answer the questions to reflect on their own lesson planning.

18. References
Amriez, S. [Shaqiss Enamenamenam]. (2013, May 21). Gagne’s Instructional Events. [Video file]. Retrieved from Denton, Jon J.; Armstrong, David G.; Savage, Tom V. Matching Events of Instruction to Objectives. Theory Into Practice. Winter80, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p Gredler, Margaret. (2009). Learning and Instruction: Theory into Practice. Columbus, Ohio: Pearson. Northern Illinois University. (n.d). Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction. Retrieved from Recker, M. (1996). Robert Mills Gagne’s Biography. Retrieved from