Lesson Planning use to take me a minimum of an hour to do, and was a huge headache. And back then I only had one and two students! I've changed the way that I lesson plan to be a combination of lesson planning and back planning, that has streamlined the process into about 30 minutes or so for all four of my current students. Today, I'll share with you how to lesson plan so that you don't have to spend all your free time each weekend planning, and instead can have more time with your kids getting out there and doing something fun.
Reference Your Weekly Planning
The first step in lesson planning each week, is for me to reference our Weekly Planning pages (or Curriculum Map) that we created back in the summer. I take those weekly planning pages and I fill in my next week of work, in this case that would be our history work. Even if we don't quite wrap up our history from the week before, I can save over that work to a flex week, because within each unit the material can largely be done in any order.
Add Your Daily Subjects
The next thing I do is go back and look at my Daily and Weekly Schedule in order to fill in the remaining daily subjects. After a week or two of lesson planning I won't even need to reference those pages. This is what tells me that DEAR time and Phonics fits in on Monday through Thursday, while writing practice works Monday through Wednesday. This is when I draw in my boxes for my check list, not when I actually fill in what we will be doing on those days. You can see an example of that in the above picture.
Check Your Personal Planner
Then, it's time to check my personal planner, or my monthly spread, since I try to keep it up today with appointments and events out of the ordinary. Last week that means I noted Ruth's birthday, and Jon's speech evaluation. It also showed me that Daddy was off on Tuesday, so it gave me the ability to bump Tuesday through Thursday by a day, while I moved Friday's adventure to Tuesday, so Daddy could come along. I tend to note these things with stickers or post it notes that I glue into my planner, so that I don't miss any important events.
Filling in the Blanks
Now that I have my set subject material from my Curriculum Map, my boxes marked off for daily subjects, and events for the week noted, I can finish filling in the details. This is when I plan science. For example, we have an upcoming doctor's appointment for two of the girls, that means, I will need that day to be a more low key science day, since that will take some time out of our schedule. It also means, I'll white out my box, or just cover it with the appointment sticker, and skip Phonics for that day. This is where I tweak and ask myself can I get everything done on this day that I'm planning or have I over extended us? Lots of moms use pencils or frixon pens in their planner for the ability to erase and make changes here. I use a pen, as I don't mind using arrows to move information or white out to make changes, and I want the assignments to be easy to read.
Back Planning
You might have noticed in the first photo that I shared, I haven't filled in what assignments are on each day for math, Kate's writing, and phonics. Those are subjects that I back plan. Some moms solely use back planning to record what they did rather than planning ahead, but that doesn't work well for me on subjects like history and science where I need to be sure I have various materials ahead of time. However, it does work really well in subjects like math and phonics, because those subjects we are going to just move on to the next page each day, unless we decide more practice is needed, or if we completely repeat a lesson. So each week when I plan, I only fill in Monday for those subjects. Then on Monday when I grade that work, I decide if we need more practice, if we are going to repeat a lesson, or if we are ready to move on to the next lesson. I follow this practice every day of the week, to be sure that we aren't rushing them too quickly through a subject, or needlessly dragging the lesson out.
In Conclusion...
By doing as much of the leg work as possible in the summer when I'm making my Weekly Planning pages I can decrease the time spent planning each week. I just copy each day's lesson plans out from those subjects that I wanted to have set schedules for, and then fill in a week or two (if you plan two weeks at a time) of subjects that need preplanning. Finally, on subjects that lend themselves to back planning because they follow a particular order, I record the next step each day. This means I spend less than 2 to 3 minutes each day and just under 30 minutes for each weekly (or bi-weekly) planning session.
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