The Lazy Teacher's Guide to Lesson Planning

Your classroom is flipped, shouldn't your planning be too?

Lesson planning is hard work. It's hard to keep up with everything, and then continue in a way that allows you to maximize and quality effectiveness, while limiting the amount of actual time it takes you to make them. That's big words for working smarter - not harder. Here's how the lazy teacher does their lesson planning.



1. Set up folders to store your lesson plans and resources. I sort mine by subject - as it is easier to navigate from year to year, cause you know, dates change.

2. Create a Lesson Plan template that you can use for each subject and save a copy of it in your subject folder.

Here's a sample for a math workshop:




The first column is best practices and components of each section of the lesson. It's their as a guide to co-teachers and also as a reminder for myself to stay on pace with time and what a quality mini lesson or reflection looks like.

The second column are best effort strategies for those different parts. I highlight what I'm using that day, or if it's new, I add it to the list. The second column is a list of common activities that I use or best practices that I could use for each lesson. Instead of re-writing these things, I keep a running list in the second column and highlight which one (or ones) I'm using for that aspect of my lesson on that day.

Here's where the lazy brilliance comes in.

Google has this amazing "Make a copy" button. When I'm ready to make a lesson for the next day, I simply make a copy of the lesson from the day before. 

My "Copy of Day 1 - Adding" becomes my "Day 2 - Adding". That way, all of my headings, activities, and formatting is instantly transferred to my next lesson plan. Then, I go through and make changes for the next day to my activities and strategies.

So from day to day, the only thing that changes are my highlighted activities, directions, reflection and sometimes my unit and guided questions (as needed). Everything else stays and doesn't require me to retype it. So from my perspective, I'm doing minimal work, but to others, each lesson is fully written out with intense details. I don't use every strategy every day, but highlighting allows me to limit the amount of time spent typing and editing a template and focus on the things that need my attention. 

I fill in only the third column with teacher directions for student activities. So when I am working, I only change the heading boxes (objectives, guided questions, and activity directions). 

For those you digital nay-sayers, you can print these templates off and do the same thing with a real highlighter and pen and still save yourself some time and writing. 

Using this same concept with your guided practice, lesson presentations, and independent practices create a place where you can have everything ready to go, ready to share, ready to collaborate, and ready to send to your students.



HAVE FUN!