Lesson Plan Implementation

The goal of my lesson plan was to teach students the anatomy of the foot, ankle and lower leg, injuries associated with various mechanisms, special evaluative tests to decipher which structures are injured and follow it all up with the students creating a video project of their own. Originally, I created the lesson plan to span a few class periods but found it a little ambitious to teach it in its entirety to my selected audience for the implementation aspect. Instead, I taught the basic anatomy of the ankle and other pertinent structures associated with ankle injuries, introduced the audience to the most common ankle injuries and how they occur. I used visual aids and text to teach the anatomy portion and assessed their understanding through matching exercises. The audience was then introduced to various mechanisms of injury and explained the stress that is put on anatomic structures, causing the injury. Some of which I actually found animations for on YouTube, which I feel aided in the understanding of the mechanisms and the subsequent injury. Finally, I used YouTube videos to show injuries occurring in real-time and they were to predict what structures would have been affected. I had my husband, a middle and high school English teacher, observe the entire lesson as to provide constructive criticism afterwards.

      My original lesson plan was geared towards undergraduate students who have been hand-selected to enter an accredited athletic training education program. I currently do not have access to this type of audience and instead asked my brother-in-law and his friend, both of which are college-aged, to participate. Both were willing and interested, though I would not go as far to say eager. Neither of them have had much education in relation to human anatomy. The lesson took place within my home and I used books I had from my college courses and created a worksheet with anatomic matching exercises on it. I then played the YouTube videos on our 40” LCD television, showing animations of ankle injuries as well as real-time injuries occurring in the athletic population. I tried to keep the time to less than an hour and a half to avoid hitting the far end of their attention spans. While interested in the pictures and text in the beginning of the lesson, I felt both were more interested and better able to understand what was going on when I played the animations of injuries. I feel these helped bring together the anatomy with the mechanism causing the injury. By the end of the lesson, the students were able to identify where structures were most likely injured during an incident, though not always the anatomic name of what was injured. But, considering they had just been introduced to the terms “anterior talo-fibular ligament”, “tibiocalcaneal ligament” and so on, I would say the lesson was for the most part successful.

The original lesson plan was intended to meet curriculum standards within an accredited athletic training education program. But for the sake of implementation, it was simply supplementing any existing knowledge the students had in regards to ankle injuries and how they occur. The assumed knowledge was that the students knew what sprains and strains were prior to beginning the lesson. I found out quickly that I would have to brief them on the differences. For this, I used the text book which I had already been using for the lesson as well as my hands to demonstrate the different degrees of each (fingers intertwined, acting as tissue fibers and the separating of them during injury). Had I been teaching the intended audience, this knowledge along with basic anatomy would already have been learned in previous classes. Since a majority of the material was both read, discussed and shown using visual aids, I feel this addressed the different ways the two students absorbed the information being presented to them. I noticed that both students also were able to relate this new knowledge with injuries they each had previously sustained. What a great connection! I feel this helped elevate the level of interest they had in the material. In reference to Konicek and Watson (1990) theories on relevance, predictability and consistency, I think the information presented was relevant to the students because they were able to take the information and apply it to their own experiences. Also, they were able to predict the outcome of a mechanism of injury after watching real-time videos of them occurring. Time constraints limited the consistency aspect of this theory.

I feel technology helped immensely in this particular lesson plan and did not detract from the information being presented. The videos I used to show animations of common mechanisms of injury helped the students correlate the ankle anatomy to the forces being placed on it under certain circumstances. Watching the real-time videos helped put together all the information that was presented to them. They were able to take their knowledge of anatomic structures, the mechanisms that stressed those structures, see the injury actually happen and predict which of those structures could potentially be injured. This of course, if they were to become certified athletic trainers, is essential to functioning as an athletic trainer.

There are criticisms of course; one being the amount of information being presented in such a short time frame. The students had very little time to process the information on their own, which I feel is something essential to learning. Though, for the sake of implementation, there were few options left that would have still upheld the basic idea of the original lesson plan.  Another criticism being I had assumed the audience knew the difference between a sprain and strain and did not originally incorporate it into the plan. Therefore, I had to spend additional time (though short) explaining the differences.

I feel the implementation process has really helped me gauge the differences and difficulties associated with a unit lesson plan verses a daily lesson plan. My original lesson plan could be considered more of a unit as opposed to a daily plan, which of course I had in mind. Though, through having to implement, it forced me to learn how to break it down into smaller parts.