NURS 764 Week 4 Project: Classroom Teaching Plan Example

Classroom Teaching Plan for the Golden Minute: A Semester Outline, Theory Integration, a Sixty-Minute Lecture and a Teaching Video for Junior BSN Students

Course and Placement

The plan is written for NURS 352, a fictitious seven-credit junior maternal-newborn course in a traditional BSN program, with four credits of classroom theory, met in two two-hour sessions weekly for fifteen weeks, and three credits of clinical practice. The golden minute unit falls in week nine, after students have studied labor, birth and the physiology of newborn transition and just before most begin their nursery and labor rotations. Billings and Halstead (2016) describe sequencing content so that each unit builds on what learners already hold, and this placement lets the unit draw on transition physiology while it is still fresh.

Semester Outline of Topics and Assessments

The golden minute unit receives a full four-hour week: one two-hour classroom session, which this plan details, and one two-hour simulation session in the lab. The six-week skills recheck in week fourteen measures objective five.

Plan for Theory Integration

Three theories shape the plan, and each changes something specific. The experiential learning theory of Kolb (2015) sets the order. Instead of opening with the algorithm, the class opens with a recorded simulation of a limp newborn, asks students what they noticed, then explains the algorithm as an account of what they saw, and ends with students working a case themselves. The lab session the same week completes the cycle with hands-on experimentation.

The NLN Jeffries Simulation Theory guides the simulation day that follows the lecture. Jeffries et al. (2015) treat facilitator, participant and design as interacting influences on outcomes, so the lab will use assigned roles, a prebriefing and a debriefing after every run, and outcomes will be measured first at the participant level with time to ventilation and role checklists.

Cognitive load theory shapes the lecture itself. Sweller (1988) showed that problem solving by searching for a route to the goal places a heavy demand on limited working memory and can block the building of the mental patterns experts rely on, while worked examples reduce that load. The lecture therefore teaches the golden minute in four small chunks, each followed by a pause for a question, and presents one fully worked case before asking teams to solve a second case on their own. Bradshaw and Lowenstein (2014) describe using brief segments and active learning in large classes, which supports the same choice.

Lecture Deliverables: Sixty Minutes

The hour below is the first half of the week nine classroom session; the second hour is a case workshop and a preview of the lab.

Opening, minutes 0 to 5. Students watch a short recorded simulation in which a term baby is born limp and the nurse hesitates. I ask two questions: what did you notice, and what would you have done in the first ten seconds? Answers are written on the board and returned to later.

Chunk 1, minutes 5 to 15. Slides explain transition at birth: lung fluid must clear, the first breaths expand the lungs, and pulmonary vascular resistance falls so blood flows to the lungs. When this fails, often after a difficult labor, the baby may be apneic or gasping. Students learn that a minority of newborns, roughly a tenth, need assistance with their first breaths, and that ventilation of the lungs is the single most important action in neonatal resuscitation (Aziz et al., 2020). I pause for one question: why would drying a baby help breathing?

Chunk 2, minutes 15 to 25. Preparation: identifying risk factors before birth, checking the warmer, towels, suction, bag and mask in the correct size and the pulse oximeter, and holding a brief team meeting to assign roles. A real bag, mask and suction bulb are passed around the room so each student handles them.

Chunk 3, minutes 25 to 37. The initial steps in the order taught: receive the baby, dry thoroughly and remove the wet towel, keep warm, position the head, clear the airway only if secretions obstruct it and stimulate by rubbing the back. Then evaluate breathing. A baby who is apneic or gasping after the initial steps, or whose heart rate is below 100 beats per minute, needs positive pressure ventilation (Aziz et al., 2020). I demonstrate drying and stimulation on a manikin, then pause: what are the two signs that tell you to ventilate?

Chunk 4, minutes 37 to 45. Ventilation is given at 40 to 60 breaths per minute, watching for chest rise, and a rising heart rate is the best sign it is working (Aziz et al., 2020). If the chest does not rise, students learn the corrective steps: adjust the mask, reposition the head, suction, open the mouth and increase pressure. A pulse oximeter belongs on the right hand. Compressions are introduced only as the next step, needed when the heart rate stays below 60 despite thirty seconds of ventilation that moves the chest, so students see where their unit fits in the full algorithm. I then walk through one worked case aloud, a baby born after a long second stage who remains apneic after stimulation, narrating each decision with its time stamp.

Team case, minutes 45 to 55. Teams of four receive a second case, a baby born through meconium-stained fluid who is gasping at thirty seconds, with role cards for a leader, a ventilator, a monitor and a recorder. Each team writes its actions with times and holds up a response card when the case asks whether to ventilate.

Close, minutes 55 to 60. Five audience response questions check the key decisions, and each student writes on an index card one thing they would now do in the first ten seconds, which I compare with the answers from the opening.

Audience Response Questions

The five closing questions are written to test decisions rather than recall of terms, and the answers are discussed briefly after each poll.

• 1. A term baby is limp and not crying at birth. What is the first thing you do after receiving the baby at the warmer? Answer: dry thoroughly and remove the wet towel while keeping the baby warm.
• 2. After drying and rubbing the back, the baby is gasping. What do you do next? Answer: begin positive pressure ventilation, because gasping is treated as apnea.
• 3. You are ventilating, and the chest is not rising. Name the first two corrective actions. Answer: adjust the mask seal and reposition the head.
• 4. What is the best sign that ventilation is working? Answer: a rising heart rate.
• 5. On which limb should the pulse oximeter be placed, and why? Answer: the right hand, because it reflects blood leaving the heart before the ductus arteriosus.

The questions are anonymous, so students who are anxious about speaking in class can still show what they know, and the distribution of answers tells me which chunk needs to be revisited at the start of the lab.

Supporting Diverse Learners in the Classroom

The plan includes the changes developed in the Module/Week 3 forum so that they are part of the standard design rather than added on request. The list of ten spoken phrases used in the scenario is posted with the video a week before class, so students learning in a second language can practice them aloud. Slides use the same pictorial action plan that will hang at each warmer in the lab, which gives every student a visual version of the sequence. The worked case is narrated slowly and repeated on a handout, and the team case gives each student a role card with written actions, so no one has to improvise in front of peers. The two students with accommodations receive the video and slides early, and the student with hearing loss sits where the demonstration is visible and the captions are on the main screen. None of these changes alters an objective; they alter how fairly students can reach it.

Evaluating the Plan

I will judge the plan by the objectives and by students' responses. Knowledge test scores after the lab will show whether objective one is met, and the timed checklists will show whether students reach the initial steps and ventilation in time. I will compare the exit ticket answers with the opening answers to see whether students' first instincts changed during the hour. A short anonymous survey will ask which segment helped most and which least. If more than a quarter of the cohort misses the sixty-second ventilation target, the lecture's fourth chunk and the lab practice time will be lengthened the following semester, and the change will be recorded for the course review.

Teaching Video

The required video is a seven-minute recording of me teaching the initial steps on a newborn manikin, posted to the course site before the lecture and played again in the lab. It opens with the objective, shows preparation of the warmer and equipment, demonstrates drying, warming, positioning and stimulation with a running clock in the corner of the screen and ends with the evaluation of breathing and the decision to ventilate. The script uses the same ten spoken phrases students practice for the simulation, and the video is captioned for students who rely on text. The script runs in five scenes: the objective and why the first minute matters, about forty seconds; preparing the warmer, towels, bag and mask, about ninety seconds; receiving, drying and warming the baby, with the clock running, about two minutes; positioning, clearing secretions only when needed and stimulating, about ninety seconds; and evaluating breathing and calling for ventilation, about ninety seconds. I will record it in the skills lab with a colleague operating the camera, review it once for accuracy against the guideline and once with a student volunteer for clarity, and re-record any scene in which the wording differs from the phrase list. The video is short on purpose: one skill, one clock, the same words students will use at the warmer.

How the Plan Relates to the Objectives

Every objective is both taught and assessed at least twice in the plan, and the clinical plan will add brief practice to strengthen objective five. Billings and Halstead (2016) describe alignment of objectives, strategies and evaluation as the core of course design, and this table is how the plan meets that standard. Stephen et al. (2026) found that pairing online preparation with hands-on practice produced gains that lasted at least six weeks, which supports posting the video before class and following the lecture with the lab.

References

Aziz, K., Lee, H. C., Escobedo, M. B., Hoover, A. V., Kamath-Rayne, B. D., Kapadia, V. S., Magid, D. J., Niermeyer, S., Schmölzer, G. M., Szyld, E., Weiner, G. M., Wyckoff, M. H., Yamada, N. K., & Zaichkin, J. (2020). Part 5: Neonatal resuscitation: 2020 American Heart Association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care. Circulation, 142(16 Suppl. 2), S524-S550. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000902

Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2016). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (5th ed.). Elsevier.

Bradshaw, M. J., & Lowenstein, A. J. (2014). Innovative teaching strategies in nursing and related health professions (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Jeffries, P. R., Rodgers, B., & Adamson, K. (2015). NLN Jeffries simulation theory: Brief narrative description. Nursing Education Perspectives, 36(5), 292-293. https://doi.org/10.5480/1536-5026-36.5.292

Kolb, D. A. (2015). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.

Stephen, A., Joho, A. A., & Bankanie, V. (2026). Impact of interprofessional blended learning with low-fidelity simulation on neonatal resuscitation skills among interns: A quasi-experimental study in Tanzania. Advances in Simulation, 11(1), Article 59. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41077-026-00451-w

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4