Lesson Planning Troubles

There are about 5000 different ways to organize your lesson plans. Each way has its benefits, some show more detail in various areas than others. I know the one question most new teachers want to know is which lesson plan system is the best. I wish I could extend out my hand and give you the "lesson planning made easy" tool box. Sadly this isn't Hogwarts and the easy button doesn't exist here. You'll have to do what I and millions of other young teachers do every day of our lives..... guess.... or in better terms.... experiment!

My personal favorite system is a time table format. I cross my schedule with a chart that gives me room to write my lesson plans in the blanks. With this format, I always know exactly what I plan to do within any given day, hour, or week. The downside to this format is space to give detail. If you need to write down absolutely every step of your routine, you may find my system daunting and a little hard to read.


Many teachers write their lesson plans out by unit of study. The good part of these types of plans is that they focus on the ending goal. It's so important to student success to always "begin with the end in mind." If your like me those words haunt your lesson planning nights.

So pour yourself a glass of wine, look at your lesson plans for the week. If I had to pick three things to tell you on your search for the perfect lesson planning format here's what I'd say:

- Do your plans give a realistic timeline for completion?
- Do your plans show forethought towards the assessments your going to give your students to show mastery?
-Do you find your own plans easy to follow? Can you explain to me exactly what your going to do and why your going to do it?

Writing good lesson plans takes practice, do your best, get inspired and your students are sure to benefit!

If you'd like to see some of my lesson plans for a better idea of the time table format or the unit plan format please contact me. I'd love to share! ( If I can figure out how to add a file to this page I'll put it up here too!)