Are Your Lesson Plans Helping You?
98% of all lesson plans are a waste of time.
That statistic is 100% made up, but feels 110% true on a Sunday afternoon when you're spending 2 hours proving you're going to be molding young minds all week!
Most lesson plans are submitted for compliance. Teachers are just copy/pasting what they did the year before and changing the dates. Most principals are check-listing whoever emails them their plans cause they're too busy with parents/students/teachers/compliance/duty to read them.
But they could actually help you teach better...
and could be done quickly...
especially after your first year of building them!
Curriculum maps. Lesson plans. Pacing Guides. I don't care what you call them, but they should help improve your instruction year over year.
We're educators. Our goal is to make students smarter/better/faster/stronger than they were the year before. So why aren't WE trying to improve every year?
Maybe you are.
Or maybe it's just getting easier cause you know your curriculum better.
Or maybe the way you set up your "lesson plan" isn't conducive to improving your instruction.
Tyler, I can see you're getting at something so just say it!
Okay, chill. Here's what I've got:
- Put your entire year in one document/spreadsheet.
- Break it up into 18 weeks (one semester) or 36 weeks (full school year).
- Place all of your standards, presentations, assignments, links, videos, etc. into that one doc/sheet as you're doing it throughout the year.
- Then the next year, just pull from this "hub" of resources and either use, change, delete, or add to this database!!
If you do this in Google Sheets or Docs (which you should), then you can just share it with your supervisor(s) so they can look at it at any time! No more emails!! Well, for that. I'm sure you'll still get your fair share of emails. ;)
Utilize. The. Reflections.
Seriously. Recap your day for 5 minutes after that day of teaching and you're essentially giving yourself notes to read in the future. It's like having the ULTIMATE co-teacher...yourself! In the future, you can get notes on a lesson - what worked, what didn't - from yourself!
If you're in a hurry and can't recap your whole day with all your resources, just highlight them real quick.
- Green - that resource/material/assessment was GOOD!
- Yellow - meh, it could be better
- Red - not good! Find a replacement!!
Here's an example of what that little guy could look like:
And you don't have to start from scratch! I've got a 36 week one you can have!!!
Just click this link, and when it asks you if you want to "Make a Copy" just say Yes!
I hope this helped just a little and I thank you for your attention in getting this far in!
Have a great day and never stop learning!
Tyler