Lesson Plans Teachers

Great Teachers Don't Write Lesson Plans

When I think back to teaching high school, one of the most dreaded things was writing lesson plans. I realize now that great teachers should not have to write lesson plans. Great teachers should worry about teaching great lessons. Looking back, I realize I wasted a huge amount of time writing lesson plans that I never really used and ones that nobody really looked at. It seems that the administration personnel in many schools use lesson plan writing as a way to keep the pack in line. From my experience, I spent way too much time fretting about writing plans that nobody cared about. Teachers have far too many responsibilities to be forced to writing weekly or daily lesson plans. As a teacher of high school mathematics, I now realize that I had available many resources which would have obviated my need to write lesson plans.

Nowadays, you can go online and get good lesson plans and other materials at many sites. (See math-drills.com for some good math worksheets and other interesting stuff that could help you plan many lessons.) Any good school should make available to its teachers lesson plan books from which teachers can choose. When I taught algebra, for example, I would spend countless hours every week preparing lesson plans for material which has been taught for hundreds of years. First of all, schools should have available for any subject, loads of prepared lesson plan books from which a teacher can select and choose the most appropriate lessons. If you are teaching Spanish I and are covering stem-changing verbs, you should be able to pull out pre-written lesson plans for this topic. Any person who has taught knows how hard teaching is. One good place to start would be providing them with lesson plan resources. Then maybe they can worry about teaching not writing lesson plans.

Are you interested in teaching? One of the basic skills you must learn, regardless of the subject you teach, is how to make ideal teachers lesson plans. Here are a few suggestions on how you can create an ideal lesson plan.

The key to creating the perfect teachers plans is to maintain an accurate balance of structure and creativity. Some teachers claim that this isn't possible. What sort of things are included in teachers lesson plans? Some basic elements include textbooks, movies, essays, anthologies, tests, quizzes, workbooks, classroom discussion topics, assignments, and others. Some teachers also include field trip plans and classroom objectives as well. Many school districts require that you submit your teachers lesson plans for scrutiny before they're approved for use. One of the easiest ways to take control of your weekly lesson planning and marking is to get into a weekly habit of getting lesson plan support. In my early years of teaching, I had to seek out lesson planning support so I would feel prepared and organized for my classes. 1. Space your time between lesson planning and marking tests and make lesson planning your focus. Lesson planning demands a great deal of thought and reflection. 2. Make it a habit to plan your lessons in advance. Many teachers I know don't like planning in advance because it takes time away from away from marking tests and spending time with their families. Of course you can't plan everything in advance and many classroom activities are also dependent on how students will react. But you can plan some of the basics like: skills, worksheets (if any), the set-up of the lesson planning, the time for each of the activities, homework (if any) and group or pair work activities and any other technical or other resources you may need.

3. Co-teach or co-plan with another teacher. If you and another teacher teach similar classes or levels, it is wise to brainstorm and plan out a week's worth of different activities and lesson plans. Budget your time with your mentor and pit the troubleshooting areas of lesson planning you need specific help with.

4. Avoid planning the same activities for each class too often. Students are smart and can "smell" the same activity twice.

Many new teachers will tell you that they are doing either one of two things: they are either planning lessons or marking tests, in addition to their actual teaching.