Weekly Tip: Lesson Planning: Long Term Planning

     Long term planning can seem overwhelming when you look at a blank lesson plan book or a blank calendar. What do I teach and when do I teach it? We talked about these issues a little bit in our newsletter a couple of weeks ago. If your district has a curriculum planned out for you, there will be little for you to do in terms of long term planning as it has already been done by your district. However, if you are not lucky enough to have everything laid out step by step, you need a way to manage your lessons and create a flow from one topic/idea/skill to the next.

     First, check with your state standards. These should be posted on your state’s education website. You will need to print these off for each academic area/grade level you teach. This will be your starting point. Most state standards are written in the language of goals. They are sweeping in nature rather than specific. Some may then provide objectives within each goal that students are expected to master during a particular grade level. The Texas Education Agency even provides instructional materials and sample lessons to show teachers how they might incorporate several “TEKS” (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) into a single lesson. Your state may not have such detailed resources, but it is certainly worth checking out.

     Once you have your state standards in front of you, it is important to organize them in a manner that moves from simple basic building block objectives towards the more complex. If you are teaching several subject areas as in elementary, you will also see objectives in each area that are similar. These are perfect opportunities for making connections between subject areas. You might want to make a chart to help you see these kinds of connecting objectives.

     Whether you have to do it all yourself or your school has provided you with a basic outline of what to teach when (often called a scope and sequence), you are now ready to begin the next phase of your long term planning. First, create a calendar with five days across and six weeks down. Mark in the dates and cross off holidays. You’ll want to do this for each six weeks grading period. If you are in a nine week grading period, you might want to do this a month at a time.

     Within each week write down one or more goals/standards you plan to teach. I suggest using a pencil and write it near the top across all the blocks. Make sure there is room in each daily block to write more information. Once you’ve set your overall goals for the grading period, go back and think about each objective that will help you meet that goal. Write in one or two objectives in each daily block depending on what students need to master to reach the goal you’ve set. Again, be sure to write in pencil and leave a little more room at the bottom of each block.

     Now that you have your overall goal for the week and your objectives set for each day you are now ready to pencil in the activities that will help your students master the objective and reach the goal. You may only have one activity for a day or several activities for that day depending on the amount of time available and the objectives to be met. When planning, keep in mind the amount of time you’ll have with your students for this subject as well as the capabilities of your class. Some students comprehend and finish activities faster than others. Be prepared for both possibilities.

     You might also want to write in or place a star next to the activities that will also serve as your assessments, or measurement of each objective. How will you know that students have mastered the objective? When you are finished, you should have something that looks like this (only in pencil and for more than just a week):

     When you are ready to write out or type out your lesson plans each week, you have a great starting place. Your daily objectives, activities, and assessment are already written out and all that is left is to fill in the gaps with regards to introduction, direct instruction, and closure. If your students take a little longer to master an objective, simply use a pencil to note the changes and rearrange your plans.

While it is very brain taxing to plan long term, the benefits far outweigh the pain! First, it will take less time each week to work up your daily lesson plans. Second, you will have a bird’s eye view of the entire grading period or unit which will help you make connections to both prior and future learning (both of which are a part of many teacher observations). Third, you are able to see the pattern of learning unfold from beginning to end and help your students make those connections.

Next week we’ll talk about a format for typing out detailed lesson plans which will also save you time and frustration over the course of the school year.