Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Lesson Plans
Lesson Plans are vital to the success of a teacher and their students. However, I believe some districts and teaching colleges go overboard in the detail required in lesson plans. I have been teaching for 11 years and have used small boxes for my lesson plans in a book and have recently changed to an online format that uses a similar box set-up. In the day's box the objective, precedure, do-now, instructional strategies and assessments are listed. I agree that all teachers need to be organized and have a plan but with some formats the work can be much too time consuming! Teachers have lives outside of school and families to attend to. Some lesson plans requires hours of work just to satisfy school guidelines. Think about the poor elementary school teacher who is responsible for multiple subjects a day. Those who are required to utilized detailed lesson plans for each of their subjects will spend their entire weekend creating them! I have taught for 11 years, not to sound like an "old dog" but I have never had to do a lesson plan for school that was as detailed as the ones I had to do when I was in college doing my student teaching and I think I am very organized and prepared for every lesson I teach. Let the teachers put more effort into the actual performance of the lesson and less into meaningless paperwork that looks good in administrations eyes!
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I'm with you 100 percent. I think lesson plans are a bit too much at times. Our schools expect too much sometimes and we sit home spending countless hours doing them. I believe that lesson plans should be general and more as a basic guideline but not so detailed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you also. I think your comment on having the teachers put more effort into the actual preformance and less on the paperwork, hits it right on the head. I worked in a school where countless hours of multiple subject lesson plans were unbearable. It appeared I did more to write the plan than actually taught! Luckily I am now working in a school and using the little boxes. It makes life easier. I think teachers should have good organizational skills but really, to have to type these lenghty lesson plans on a daily basis is a waste of time! I don't mind typing up a complete lesson plan for my evaluations or for a special lesson but all the time is ridiculous. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this blog posting! This definitely put a non teacher like me at ease; I was getting a little nervous for a second because it took me a few hours to do one lesson plan. Granted I’ve never done one before I was fumbling around a bit trying to figure things out but I was questioning in my mind if this is what it is going to be like for every single lesson I have to teach.
ReplyDeleteI do see a need for basic structure as to what to teach and having an outline to keep thoughts in order but I didn’t really see a need for all of the information that was put into the lesson plan I created; unless it is being used for a substitute teacher.
Thanks again for the posts!
You have a great point Mike. I do think it is important for colleges to put us through that more detailed process. Producing detailed lesson plans in college is a way for the students to show they are able to prepare for the actual class. Once in the classroom though, it doesn't matter how thorough a lesson plan you have, if the teacher can't teach it won't make a difference.
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