Want a Lesson Planning Template FREE? This weekly lesson planning template will save you so much time and energy so that you can focus your attention on the actual teaching of your content.
If you’re a veteran teacher like me, I simply hate writing lesson plans. I have been in the classroom for over two decades so I’ve gotten pretty good about the pacing of my content and what lesson objectives I’m going to teach that day. But still my administrators require that we maintain up-to-date lesson plans. So I am here to give you a FREE lesson plan template printable that you can immediately use in your own classroom.
You are also going to learn tips and tricks on how to plan out your year. This will include learning about a proven strategy to make sure that you don’t run out of time in the year or cram everything at the end (which drives the students, their parents and you crazy).
After downloading the weekly lesson planning template, you’ll be all set to finish those dreaded lesson plans.
This post is all about lesson planning tips, lesson planning tips new teachers, lesson plan format, and the bonus is a free lesson plan template for teachers.
Best Lesson Planning Template FREE
Lesson Planning Tips
Ok, let’s be real. Lesson planning is essential for any course and for any teacher. It’s the roadmap by which teachers know what they’ll teach on a given day. While I hate having to sit there and write down daily lesson plans, I definitely take the time per semester and month to plan out my lessons.
It is super important to look at the course content for the year and decide what material you’re going to cover when. Sometimes you have a scope and sequence that is set by your school district or just your department in your school. Other times you may find yourself with complete freedom on how to map your content for the year.
The NUMBER ONE tip for beginning to lesson plan is to keep the end in mind.
Yes! The secret to successful planning is to plan BACKWARDS.
That means, do you have an end of course exam? Do you have any type of external assessment that needs to be completed by a certain date? For example, in high school, there are many EOCs (end of course exams) that are run by the state or school district.
If you teach a course that has an end of year exam or portfolio or anything with a set due date that you cannot miss, then you HAVE GOT TO plan with the end in mind.
So how exactly do you plan with the end in mind?
Here are four easy steps.
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- Grab your course objectives for the year.
- Grab a calendar that includes all of the months from the school year. You can get one from Amazon.com (like this one that I absolutely LOVE) for under ten bucks, or you can check out a quick printable version from my TpT store that gets updated every year and is only $2.
In the calendar write down this so-important-cannot-be-missed-date (EOC, final exam, deadline, etc.).
3. On your calendar make a note of teacher workdays, professional development days, holidays, vacation days you’re taking, and any other days that you know for sure you will not be there to teach. I know in my school we have different activities for seniors that will keep a lot of them out of class, like a senior picnic, senior brunch, grad weekend or grad night, pep rallies during certain periods, etc. So mark those down on your calendar if you know them in advance.
4. Fill in the rest of the days backwards until you get to the start of the school year to make sure you don’t run out of time. By planning backwards if you need to double-up on lessons, you can probably do that at the beginning of the year when usually the content is easier than that you’ll need to cover at the end of the year and/or you’re still reviewing old material.
So now that you’ve matched your teaching content to your calendar, do you have a lot of time available for review? Assessments? Practice exams? Any unforeseen interruptions? Sick days for you?
If you have some days blank without teaching content, then you can move up your calendar and it’s a great idea about every two weeks (if your calendar permits it) to include a catch up day or review day.
I know when teaching math I’m usually pretty optimistic about how much content I can cover in one day, only to realize that in a class that’s an hour and a half long, by the time I go over the answers to last night’s homework and present the new lesson, I usually run out of time. So many times a lesson I feel will take one or two class periods quickly becomes three class periods. The beauty of planning out the entire year is that you know whether or not you have the luxury of taking longer to cover a content. There are times when I’ve had to postpone giving a quiz or test, or simply made it shorter because I know that taking an extra day on a topic will set me back and then I will not be able to cover the entire curriculum before their end of course exam.
Lesson Planning Tips New Teachers
If you are a new teacher, your first year is all about survival. It’s literally just trying to keep your head above water to make it to the end of the year. Teaching is hard! It takes so much energy. Recently a beginning teacher at my school that was interning the previous year told me that now she understands why teachers have so much time off! They need it to recharge and be able to step back into the classroom.
So if you’re a beginning teacher, trust me, it gets better and easier! This is where organization comes into play.
Try following the “keeping the end in mind lesson planning tips” mentioned above. Also ask other teachers how they create their lesson plans so that you can see varied lesson plan examples. You will then experiment and find the one that works best for you.
Some teacher’s lesson plan format is handwritten in a book. Others have a checklist. I do mine in the template that I’m providing for you here and I like it to be typed because it looks more professional. Any changes I make to my plans I do them in pen or pencil. It allows me to see what worked from year to year (maybe I needed additional time to complete one activity, or vice versa, something I thought would take long didn’t take long at all). It also allows the administrator completing my evaluation to see how I adjust my lesson plans and how I reflect on my practice. So it’s a win-win.
Don’t think your lesson plans have to be perfect! No way. Every class, every group of kids, every DAY is different. It’s one of those things I love about teaching. If you teach high school and teach the same class for multiple periods, then usually by the time you get to your last class you already know what worked best for teaching that content and what didn’t work. You’ll already have an idea of what questions your students had, which questions stomped them, and so on. So usually that last period you teach you can cover the same material in less time. So keep this in mind so that you don’t have 15-20 minutes of downtime without having the students do anything. That’s usually how you run into discipline problems.
Lesson Plan Format
So what needs to be included in a lesson plan anyways?
- For starters, the TOPIC. What are you teaching that day? What section is it in your book and/or syllabus? What’s the name of the section?
You can write something like this:
Topic: 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 Scientific Notation, Laws of Exponents and Solving Linear Equations
2. Then come the OBJECTIVES. What standards or objectives will students walk away having learned that day? SWBAT is short for “Students will be able to”.
You can write something like this:
Objectives: SWBAT
- simplify exponential expressions using the laws of exponents
- write numbers in scientific notation and complete computations in the real-world
Here’s where Bloom’s Taxonomy comes into play. You want to make sure that you are using higher order thinking skills in your classroom and you want to make sure that those verbs appear in your lesson plans.
3. Now you want to list the STANDARDS that you will be addressing in your lesson. Check with your department chair if you are not sure what standards your department follows. Usually you can find these standards on your school district’s website. If you’re teaching common core standards, then you might be interested in this Common Core High School Math Standards Checklist and Quick Reference Guide that has been such a time saver for so many teachers. In the PDF file you can quickly search by keyword and you can quickly find the standard you are looking for. You can also search online and you can find the standards that way.
You can write something like this:
Common Core Standards:
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.EE.A.4
Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading). Interpret scientific notation that has been generated by technology - CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSN.RN.A.2
Rewrite expressions involving radicals and rational exponents using the properties of exponents.
4. Now you’re ready to write down the ACTIVITIES that your students will do that day. Here is where some teachers just make a list of common activities that take place in their classroom and then check off the ones they’re targeting that day. I like to type mine out since it gives me the ability to be more detailed.
You can write something like this:
Activities:
- Bell ringer #4
- Review last night’s homework
- KWL activity to review prior knowledge of exponents and scientific notation
- Class discussion on laws of exponents
- CRISS Strategy: Jump-in reading of scientific notation worksheet
- Classwork in pairs
- ACT/SAT Practice
5. Now it’s time to list the ASSESSMENTS. How do you plan on assessing your student’s learning? It can be as simple as teacher observation or class participation. It could be a more traditional route like a quiz or a test.
You can write something like this:
Assessment:
- Bell ringer
- Homework
- Teacher Observation
- Class work
- Class Participation
- Exit Slip
6. And you should end your lesson plan with the HOMEWORK assignment for that day.
You can write something like this:
Homework: Ch. 1 p. 17 #1-10 and study for quiz next class on laws of exponents and scientific notation.
7. One last thing! In the HEADER of my lesson plan template I like to include the name of my course, the class periods I teach it and, of course, the dates of the lesson (we’re on block schedule). In the FOOTER I like to include the ESE and ESOL strategies that I incorporate into my teaching such as visuals, hands-on activities, prompts, cues, body language, and oral repetition.
How to use this free lesson plan template printable.
So now that we’ve gone over the format of the lesson plan, you can definitely go out and create your own, or simply download the FREE template that I use when writing my lesson plans.
You’ll be redirected to go to my TpT store where you can download the Microsoft Word file. You’ll get the template as a Word document and you’ll see that the first two pages have actually been filled in in case you need a sample. Just type right over them. There are 20 pages included and you can also just copy paste if you need more.
Remember to get yourself a calendar.
You can purchase one like the one below on Amazon for less than $10. You can also create one yourself for free on Microsoft Word.
This blog post was all about lesson planning tips, lesson plan format and getting your FREE lesson plan template.
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