We all know those ubiquitous green lesson plan books. First-year teachers and tenured teachers use them alike. But, why? Yes, they are portable and you can open them during class. However, they are difficult to edit, destroyed by a coffee spill, and have limited space for details.
Everything else has gone electronic - isn't it time your lesson plans did, too?
At left is a shot from my lesson plan file. It's a simple table setup in Microsoft Word. I copied the basic design of the old lesson plan book, but have much more functionality and flexibility on the computer.
Each week is a new table, with cells that freely expand to fit whatever I need. By the end of the school year, I have a record of what I did in each class, every day. I can then save it for the new year with a new filename, and edit as necessary!
TIPS:
- Reflection is an important part of teaching. So, write yourself a note for next year directly on your plan! Use a different font color to make it stand out.
- Add web links and filenames in your plan so you can find resources later. Whenever you find a new resource, just paste the link below the appropriate week so you can find it later. You don't have to be working on that unit right now - you may have already done it - but it'll be there when you need it again.
- Use the search function! Ctrl-F will help you find anything in the entire file quickly. So, when you find that excellent activity on the Civil War, but you're working on colonies now, just search 'Civil War' in your file & put a link/filename for the activity in the appropriate place.
- If you find a great news article for a certain unit, include it in your unit notes. Save the article itself as a PDF file so it doesn't disappear, making sure to include a proper citation, then put the file name & location with the plans for that unit.
- Need special equipment for an activity? Write yourself a note in the plan a couple days before the activity to set it up. Leave it in red font as a 'to do', then color it green when it's done!
- Not sure if your students are doing as well on their tests as in past years? Record the average for each class (honors, self-contained, academic, team-taught, etc.) on the date of the test/quiz. Even when you make a few changes year-to-year, you know roughly how they compare on those concepts.
- If you have several classes with the same lesson, you can copy-paste, merge cells (like I've done for 2/3/4 and 6/7), or say 'same as...'
- When a snow day, 2-hr delay or schoolwide activity throws off your plans, just select & drag your information from one day to another. No more erasing!
Weekly Templates.docx | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: | docx |