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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Custom Lesson Plans

 Last week Katie from Persnickety Pickles posted her lesson plan format. Truthfully I've been wanting to post my lesson plans for a VERY long time. I just didn't know where to start. I've been going around & around all week thinking about how I would post about lesson planning. I thought I would begin with how I started making my OWN lesson plans.

When I was a first year teacher, feels like so long ago, I was completely lost when it came to putting my lessons on paper. Sure I had already worked in a school & with kids for years. I felt completely comfortable in front of a class, & had every inch of my lessons planned in my head but my paper lesson plans??? Well, lets just say if Administration came into my room that first month & asked to see my plan book, I might not still be teaching today.

You know those big plan books, with the boxes? They never worked for me... I tried but I just always felt like I wanted some parameters. Nothing against those teachers who used them but I was always frustrated. I also tried those LONG, lesson plan formats that they make you do when your getting your degree. They were too time consuming & I was not happy about doing one of those for each lesson 5 days a week. I was a bit lost as to how to document my lessons.

That when it happened, I was sitting at a weekly staff meeting when I looked over & saw another first grade team member filling out an interesting form. I saw a box for Phonics, Reading, & Writing. I asked to take a closer look & sure enough those boxes had a particular routine activities & spaces for the teacher to write in and activity if it were something different. The best part was that in two pages, sitting next to each other, I had a whole of lesson plans. I fell in LOVE with this format right away.

She graciously shared with me & it changed my life. It was to easy to plan after that. I could check off routine activities, if we were working on them that day, & if not I didn't. I could also write in the writing prompt for the day or just page numbers of work pages, anthologies, anything!

The following year we changed reading series & so I got on my computer & made my own, custom lesson plan format. I wrote in what I wanted to cover daily so that I could once again check them off if I was planning on doing that activity. What changed for me was that I MADE MY OWN format. It was not easy at first. I had to learn to navigate using a table on Word & if you've never done it, it can be a pain. The margins were tricky too, but once you had a basic layout it was not that hard. I even get to use change my fonts. What I learned was that I liked doing this. It sounds crazy but I liked it a lot. Don't misunderstand it did take me a while to get it done just right, and I used to walk away from the computer drained & dazed, still do sometimes, but it was not horrible. The best part was that I got EXACTLY what I wanted.

Now at the start of every year I go back & tweak my format to fit my students & my needs. I have even been know to change the format quarterly. It was a bit more complex when I switched from a gen ed first grade teacher to ELL teacher, but I was able to transfer some pieces of my old template, which I liked so much.

So I decided to post some generic templates for you all to download. So when I pulled up my older lesson plan formats they went all screwy because I don't have those fonts on this computer & I also have a different version of WORD. SO I decided that I would tweak them & post them at another time.However I do want to post something for you all. These are my current ELL lesson plan templates. Although they can be used for a Gen Ed class, they don't have all the components I liked to have when I taught Gen Ed.

Kindergarten Plans
1st Grade Plans

It looks weird in Google Docs & doesn't show the lines for you to write on but when you download it it looks normal. I hope that in the next week I will have a chance to post my two page Language Arts lesson plans.

I would love for you to share what you all think. & how do you plan for your lessons.

63 comments:

  1. I posted mine on my blog faithfulinfirst.blogspot.com. I love your plans and am always looking for new ways to integrate mine with other plan templates. Thanks for sharing.

    Janine

    ReplyDelete
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  2. From what I am seeing this is what I have been looking for. Cannot wait to see the general ed and I am hoping you post it where we can edit it and add our own times, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Janine, I saw your plans they look good. I too love seeing how other teachers plan.

    Mrs. Daniels, i'd love to share a version you can edit in a post because Google Docs messes with the margins. However, I can send it to your email. When I post the Gen Ed version if you want a copy let me know & I can send it directly to your email.

    Ms. M

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  4. Sounds great Ms. M. My email is Tam118dans@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Ms. M.!
    I would love an editable copy of your GenEd plans! thanks so much for sharing! : )
    Cindy
    cja1st@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. I will gladly get those to you soon ladies. I would just like to tweak them a little bit. And by tweak I mean fix.

    Ms. M
    www.msk1ell.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. I would love your gen ed plans as well. Thanks so much!!

    Danielle
    danikteacher2@aol.com

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great minds think alike! I shared my plans through Growing Kinders' linky party! I, too, made my own - if you get frustrated with the margins in Word, you may find it easier to work in Excel. That's how I made mine! I love having something that is customized to my teaching and my students' learning!

    ReplyDelete
  9. A BIG thank you! I am also a K-1 ESL teacher. My kids seem to need so much that I'm never completely sure what I should be focusing on. I will be checking your blog on a regular basis. I am so glad that I found it!
    Nina

    ReplyDelete
  10. Would you be so kind as to email me the lesson plan template? pfoster1@hotmail.com

    Thanks - Pam

    ReplyDelete
  11. I've taught K for 15 years and have probably worked on my lesson plan format every year! I guess with K standards changing so much.... Anyway, this week I have grown very unhappy with my current format. Thanks for the help!
    Suzan
    krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  12. Susan if you liked this template you mght also like what I've posted over on www.ateachersplan.blogspot.com. I sell my templates and also offer some other freebies. Go take a look around.

    Ms. M
    www.msk1ell.blogspot.com
    www.ateachersplan.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  13. I enjoyed reading it. I require to study more on this topic. Thanks for sharing a nice info..Any way I'm going to subscribe for your feed and I hope you post again soon.
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  14. I love your lesson plans. I would love a copy of the gen ed plan, too. My email is amandm@gmail.com. If you don't mind my asking, what font did you use in these plans? Thanks so much.

    Amanda

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Go here to download the template.
      http://ateachersplan.blogspot.com/p/templates-for-sale.html

      M

      Delete
  15. Can you please email me your lesson plan? Thank you so much!

    Kristinedwards5866@gmail.com

    Kristin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can download the template here...
      http://ateachersplan.blogspot.com/p/templates-for-sale.html

      M

      Delete
  16. Can you please email me your lesson plan? Thank you so much!

    Kristinedwards5866@gmail.com

    Kristin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can download the template here...
      http://ateachersplan.blogspot.com/p/templates-for-sale.html

      M

      Delete
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