How do you Plan Your Lessons?
How do you plan? Do you handwrite your lesson plans? Do you create them electronically? Do you have a fancy or a plain plan book?
I’ve been teaching for 13 years, so I “grew-up” planning by hand. I love pencils and erasing. I have all my old plan books and the best are blank ones where I have plenty of space to write.
I taught Kindergarten for three years and Kinder is very repetitive, so I finally created a plan book on my computer, so I could just copy and paste.
When I “upgraded” to a 1/2 combo last year, I had to go back to paper and pencil. My brain worked better that way. Partway through the year, when I had a clear routine, I realized that I could make an electronic plan and save a bit of time!
I spent some time this week planning for our first three days back! This is by no means complete (I already see stuff missing!), but I’ve got a good start on it. I basically typed in what I did last year and made a few modifications.
The schedule up top is our “general” schedule. Other than our start, stop, lunch and recess, most of it is adjustable. The numbers are our days in school. I can never keep track of them!
I try to get into a “routine” early on in the year. Our general routines include: Journal, Daily 5, Recess, Read Aloud, Math, Lunch, ELD, Writer’s Workshop, Social Studies or Science. Of course, each day is a little bit different, but for the most part, the same, too! Students thrive on routine and know what to do!
My *new* lesson plans are in a PowerPoint file. I created a general template (the table and boxes) and adjust it for each week, based on days off, “short” days, etc. So far, I’ve formatted it through December, based on our school schedule.
We don’t have anyone collecting our lesson plans and I don’t need to show anyone what I’m teaching, which is great! I just need to make sure my kiddos are learning and passing their assessments, which are four times a year.
How do you plan? What resources do you use to organize yourself and make your planning more efficient?
Hi Jessica, I love your post about planning. It has taken me 5 or 6 years, but I have finally found a template that I really like. This past year, I had my weekly template in Word but it would often drive me bonkers! So I plan to make it in PowerPoint this year or in our SMART Notebook software. Either one, I think will be more user friendly and will also allow me to save as a jpeg which will be nice for posting on my blog. I only hand wrote plans for 1 year and quickly realized that because kindergarten is so repetitive (like you said) it saves a lot of time to have a template for each week that can be adjusted as needed. Thanks for sharing!
Christin
http://shiftingteacherk-2.blogspot.com
Hi!
I bought an Erin Condren planner for this year and already I am regretting it!!! I honestly never hand wrote my plans, so I don’t know what I was thinking. The cute, customized little bugger sucked me in! I really think I will do them on the computer just for simplicity’s sake. I’ve made some good templates in the past, but they were a page per day. Not sure if I’m willing to go that overboard this year. So basically, to answer your question… I have no idea! lol
I love your template, did you do this in word? Although I do type my lesson plans online, I am still at heart a paper and pencil type of girl. What you said about getting a routine really resonated with me, and I think sometimes that is where I do struggle with it as there are so many ideas with it. I tutor from home mostly so sometimes it is hard for students to see how much they have progressed since I only see them once a week.
I have found a couple of great ideas that has helped with my clases and lesson planning. A lot of small activities that I have found over the years really has helped with beginning of class activities. I don’t do all of them, but some of these are: Grej of the day (mini lessons on any topic), reading a picture book everyday to the students, the visual thinking strategies by the NYT, and the reading fluency passages by Reading Flow.
Yes! The Curriculum Planning Template is available as a Word document. It can easily be uploaded to Google Doc and most other programs will open it as well.
1st Year Teacher and I really like your site!
7/8 Grade Science