No More Lesson Plans | How to Lesson Plan Effectively

hello there everyone and welcome to another live chat bridget spacman here and i am so excited to be here with all of you tonight i know that you are here because you're tired of spending hours upon hours planning out your lessons and i am so excited to share with you my secret that i have been using for many years to help me plan my lessons and take back my weekend so i want to hear you guys in the comments i want to know how and when do you plan your lessons are you a sunday planner are you someone who likes to plan throughout the week let me know over here in the chat this is going to be a really informative and i have a nice little goody for you guys that i will be sharing in just a moment because i do want to get this into your hands tonight so that you can start thinking about how am i going to really prepare myself for the beginning of the year so that you can make a shift in how you're planning your lessons i definitely don't want you guys leaving here feeling as though this is something that i'm not going to be able to do i'm going to help break every single one of my steps down with you guys tonight um but i promise you that when you leave here this evening all right when you leave here this evening you're going to have actionable steps that you're going to start to take maybe not for this school year especially if you're like me and you have 39 days of school i'm not counting but i am counting because it starts to stress me out not because i want my kids to leave me because i do really love my class but because i get really stressed towards the very end of the school year i'm like counting the days and i'm like okay so i've got to fit all this stuff in before they end up leaving me i have so many fun things that i want to do with my kids and so i'm counting down the days because it's like it's the it's time it's like i'm on but you might not be able to do what we're talking about now but i promise you that over the summer you're going to see this format for planning out your lessons so much more effective and it's going to help you start to the next school year can we believe that we're already talking about that you're gonna start your next school year so much more prepared than what you have felt this year okay so let me see what you guys are seeing over here in the chat the chat a soul says i'm planning right now oh my goodness gracious um leslie says throughout the week i definitely give our mod some love leslie she is fantastic um i adore leslie so please make sure to say hi to her in the chat and give her some some nice little hearts in there thank you leslie for always joining us in our chat here um let's see so i see that heather says weekly is when she plans it i plan my lessons out every wednesday for the creative catchest i believe that's how it's pronounced hector says throughout the week i start on friday and then finish on sunday i'm a newbie teacher so i plan the whole week from jillian and then day by day linda i love your honesty sometimes we live by those day by day moments i know that i have definitely been there and done that and so i'm hoping that i'm gonna help you guys out tonight um so definitely a sunday planner logan i understand and feel you on those moments as well so mostly on the weekends so all right guys let's go ahead and we're going to jump right on in because i want to give you guys all of this information and allow you to ask questions when and where it fits for what we're talking about okay so here's the thing i know that you are here and you are in this right place if one you are spending more than two hours a week planning out your lessons so for that week if you're spending more than two hours you are in the right place tonight because i'm gonna help you not spend two hours a week more than two hours a week you should be done by that point if you are struggling with being able to identify your learning targets and the progression that you're teaching in i'm gonna help you with that as well tonight we're gonna chat all about learning targets it's been something that i've been exploring in my almost 10 years of teaching i've been doing it and really learned and grown and i'm going to share some of the knowledge that i have acquired over these years about learning targets with you here tonight if you feel as though you are constantly reinventing the wheel every single year you are in the right place tonight my friend because i have definitely been where you are where it's like you have these lessons you're like hmm what did i do i know i had a really great activity or this really great mentor text but you don't really remember what it is so you're constantly feeling as though you are reinventing the wheel this live chat is for you and then finally if you're looking to find just a more effective way of lesson planning and you want to use this year after year i guarantee you that this is really going to help guide you tonight and developing those effective lesson plans so here's what i'm gonna have you guys do tonight we're gonna talk a little bit about lesson planning um we're gonna go in depth as far as how do we lesson plans and i want you guys to be active in the chat so i'm going to set up almost like a mock lesson plan for you and i am going to go ahead and type this in the chat for you right now because this is what you are going to need to get all right so um actually can you type that in for me i'm gonna have to type it in over here for me um so you are gonna head to www.theletteredclassroom.com forward slash no more lesson plans all together okay so the letteredclassroom.com forward slash no more lesson plans and this is going to be your free guide to be able to help plan out step by step everything that we're going to talk about here tonight i even gave you some example lessons and i have some very generic but i still think very useful lesson plan templates i'm gonna be very honest with you guys i am not the uber cutesy teacher that's like out there i'm not that pinterest teacher definitely not um i like to think practical i like things that are efficient and so some of the templates that i have for you and i will be sharing with you tonight here in this live chat are just that they're basic they're efficient and they're gonna work for you um but you can kind of tweak it and make it make it your own and and color it up if you want to color it up i'm pretty basic i'm a basic lady um there's no shame in any of that right guys so here we go i want to see you guys i just got on i'm reading this right so make sure you head over there grab that freebie and let's go ahead and get started so here's what i want to show you very quickly i'm going to show the freebie to you before we get started just so that you have an idea of what you're going to be getting so let me adjust myself there so here is what the freebie is going to be for you guys so essentially you're going to get this no more lesson plans guide and it is going to help uh show you all of the tips that we're looking at here tonight so here are kind of the step-by-step pieces that we're going to be visiting um and it has some split some spaces for you to be able to fill in and then it also has some downloadable links here which you can click on and then gain those links and then just place them into your google drive so this is going to be your freebie for tonight i want you guys to head over there grab it now so that as i'm going through this you can kind of start writing some things down um and we are going to um kind of share through you the process for how i plan lessons all right y'all like some of the fancy stuff that we got going on i have the down view the picture picture we're trying we're definitely trying here okay so let's talk about lesson planning overall i got to be honest with you guys this is this journey of lesson planning for me was a really hard one especially when i was in kindergarten because for me i was planning you know my different whole groups i had small groups i had to plan for all of these different centers so i had reading centers i had math centers and so i was exploring so many different types of lessons that were out there lesson planning templates that were out there and nothing ever really seemed to just click for me then when i came into fourth grade uh same thing it was like i just couldn't kind of i couldn't find the vibe for how i wanted to plan out my lessons and to be honest i had my own paper planner at the very beginning of fourth grade and then i kind of switched to going to digital and i tried to put all of that information in there well the problem with that was is that i don't have a ton of space i mean how many of you guys and let me know here in the chat you have like a planner that you're trying to fit all of that information in um and so it makes it really difficult to put a lot of that information into those lesson planning books whether you're using a paper one a digital one and so you just kind of you're not really sure where you're going with it but when you really have super detailed plans i want to say that you feel more confident as a teacher i know for me i did i really felt confident when i sat down and i really wrote out my lesson plans to what was gonna happen when i was gonna have my kids turn and talk what i was gonna have them work on what i was going to focus on really saying um as far as like introducing the lesson to my students as far as closing the lesson for my students when i had those things written out i felt really confident as a teacher and i didn't feel as stressed going into the school day but when i was trying to plan on my like lesson plan book which was just a paper planner or i was trying to do it in my digital planner i really struggled i wasn't able to put as much information and it was just hard and so i was feeling unprepared as a teacher going into that day so i want to know in your in the chat how do you lesson plan do you have like a true lesson plan template that you just fill out online do you use planned book are you using a teacher planner where you feel like you're trying to fit all of your plans within the constraints of this little bitty box that you have um definitely put that down in the chat because there's so many ways that we can lesson plan and i'll be honest with you guys when i lesson plan now i have kind of two different formats that i'm going to show you today the first format is what we're going to talk about here and i want to think of this as my proactive format for lesson planning and we'll dig deeper into this in just a moment but then i also have my lesson planning like my planner that i use um on a daily basis and i want to think of my planner as kind of my quick you know guide of what i'm doing and if i need more detail into what i'm specifically teaching that day then i'll head to my proactive planning again which is what we're going to talk about today and that really has helped me over the years these last like five years that i've been teaching when i started transitioning to this method of lesson planning i found that i wasn't planning on the weekends i wasn't planning on the evenings i was able to leave work at work which is a really good feeling not to feel um obligated to bring something home and to do something i now can come home and be with my kids and be with my husband and just kind of relax which is nothing that i really do i don't relax um quick and truly funny story as you guys are putting your comments in the chat here i felt like we it was probably over easter weekend i'm like looking at my husband over there because i'm trying to make sure that this is what it was but i swear we were like hanging out at my in-laws it was a gorgeous day outside and probably about like five or eight minutes into it like everybody's writing go-karts i'm like i'm gonna go sweep the porch wasn't that easter weekend i just feel like i never really sit down i'm like i'm gonna go sweep and like tidy up the porch so that we can eat outside because it was really really beautiful so i i truly don't ever rest um but i feel good knowing that i don't have to work if i don't want to work at home okay so let's see what you guys are saying here in this in the comments so um reena says we use a lesson plan template so marissa says my district is lucky and they have a curriculum calendar that states what should be done each week and day before i was i was at this district planning did take me a really long time i completely understand you there marissa and i am also curious for all of you do you have a progression um do you have specific things that your district tells you to teach um or is it more open for us we have kind of this time frame so let's say it's you know a trimester and within this trimester i have to fit all of these different parts in but it doesn't necessarily tell me oh you're going to work on this for a week you're going to work on this for like two weeks we're more just kind of broad it just says here are the standards here's the focus you need to do this within the first trimester that's that's about what my school does so i'm able to kind of put in my own creativity add in my own teaching style in there and also make sure that i'm adjusting my lessons for my students which is really really important so let me know in the chats that as well i'm just curious i'm just a nosy person in general um let's see lola says we have a map um since we're a charter store we look at the district mac but we go by the unit test that the district takes so that we know what to be teaching and i think that's also a really common way of planning out your lessons um i love census says paper and pencil planner i totally feel you i was a paper pencil planner girl for a very very long time um digital planning template provided by your school that's always really nice when a school provides you with a template i'm not curious though do you have to use that template like is that something that they say this is the thing we're going to put our thumb down on and you have to live by it um my co-work and i also use weekly lessons my like you guys are adding all kinds of comments i can't catch up here we go um let's see lola says all the standards have to be taught before the final benchmark in march state um test is in april except for this year totally understand alexis i think that's kind of how my district tends to tends to work as well um juliette says i'm still looking for a really good system to do weekly planning and also a scope and sequence juliet this live chat is for you okay guys so we're gonna go ahead and jump on in to the very first thing again don't forget to grab your freebie for tonight the letteredclassroom.com forward slash no more lesson plans so the first thing that we're going to talk about is to identify the purpose you know i have this video um it is of michael jr he's a comedian and he has this video on youtube and i saw it gosh i want to say it was like three years ago three or four years ago where he said you know when you understand your why your what becomes easier to to know so he was doing some sort of a presentation and in that presentation he basically called out and said hey you know you're a you know a music teacher i want you to sing you know i think it was i can't even remember uh amazing grace and so the guy sang amazing grace did a phenomenal job like everybody's like what man can sing and then all of a sudden he says i want you to sing amazing grace but this time i want you to think about and he gave him all of these different criteria and so when he understood the reason his purpose for singing he really let it all out like he knew exactly what he was going for so we have to identify our purpose and here are some different ways that we can do this one i think you obviously need to look at the scope and sequence for your district right so when we're looking at that scope and sequence if you have one for your district you have to determine okay what is my focus so here's a couple of examples so i mentioned right now that i have a trimester and within that trimester i have to teach so many different things now it's a little bit different for me because i am multi-age i'm on a mac team so i've gotten special permission to be able to incorporate bridging literacy which still kind of follows the guidelines of my district but i think we tweak it just a little bit and it's just a in a different format but it all still works and so we've been approved with that piece so if you think about bridging literacy you have like a unit and you think about that unit as like a narrative unit and within that narrative unit i know that i have to teach you know these different standards so here are the focus standards and so for me i know my why my why is that i'm teaching these standards to help us analyze good text so that my students can write a really good narrative writing that's my why for kindergarten when i had our scope and sequence there we would teach like literature for like two or three weeks and then we would go to informational for two or three weeks but within that two or three weeks we had specific standards that we would focus on so i could plan my lessons how i wanted to plan my lesson i just knew that i had to focus on those standards so my progression and how i taught it could like that could change so long as i did it within that time frame um if you think about maybe even a science unit which by the way if you're a science teacher a math teacher a writing teacher an english you know teacher whatever it is this format is going to work for you because i use this for everything and so for let's say content you know if you're doing um a plant life unit then you can your purpose is for them to understand the standards at the end of that unit right what is the goal of it understand your purpose your why for what you are teaching so it may be based on unit it can be based on topic or it can just be based on standards within a specific time frame whatever it is determine what's my why what's my purpose for this what do i want my students to be able to achieve we always work with that backwards planning we start with the end in mind so that we can help to develop a very clear path for me guys i felt like i've done this many many many times um in the past where i would have a lesson i would have a unit a topic and it's like okay i'm gonna plan this lessons out and then as i'm planning the lesson i'll be scrolling through pinterest and i'm like oh that looks like a really fun activity i'm gonna pull that and i'm gonna do that the next day but the problem with that was that i never really got to the end i was constantly going on these little detours and i was stopping and it was like oh my gosh what are we gonna get there it was like the road trip that never ended so i'm trying to help you get to the end so that way we can stay on track with the learning that needs to take place and you don't feel like you're constantly having to come up with all of these different activities we don't want to do that our goal is to be able to be proactive in our lesson planning so that we're not spending hours upon hours trying to develop our weekly lessons okay you guys feel me all right so here we go the second part of this um is to identify the learning targets oh learning targets guys i have a huge love for learning targets if you are not using learning targets in your classroom i will tell you you need to start using them in your classroom now a lot of people call these different things right they call them student objectives uh they will call them i can statements daily learning targets to me it's all the same thing i think they're all the same um i think it's just and how you create those daily learning targets um jonas says ooh i checked out the learning target page in the freebie and i love it i am so glad that you love it now let me help to explain it all for you so here we go daily learning targets the idea of this in basic just understanding is it's allowing kids to know what is the learning that is going to be taking place for the day and again this is usually written in student-friendly language right we don't want to use all the fancy terms that are like in the standards you don't want to post up the standard because i'm telling you guys standards are so broad there is no way that you can teach one standard within a day it's just never going to happen so what you have to imagine is that you're taking that standard which is like your umbrella right we all know like the umbrella with the the drops of water or the table with the legs same idea right the base is going to be our standards and what we're doing is we're starting to create these learning targets that is attainable learning for students within a one to two three day period okay i wouldn't go more than a three day period you want it to be something that can happen in one or two days very very basic but also an attainable and every time you're building these learning targets you're moving them towards that end goal okay so again we're going to take that from the first step this really big idea and we're going to break it down into these learning targets so i want to show you what this could look like for you i'm using the planning page that i'm sharing inside of the freebie so let me get just switched over here hi okay so if we're looking at this freebie um step two is gonna be building learning targets so we have to know exactly where we're going and every single day my students will walk in and they will have a learning target for every different subject area we only do one learning target i don't like to overload them if you have to do two i completely understand i've been there done that you can just make sure that it is going to be something that is attainable for them to be able to accomplish you want them to be able to see the learning that's taken place and here's the thing with learning targets you do not want these to be confused with what kids are doing that day i'm going to come back here because i think this is really important you do not want to confuse this a daily learning target with something that the kids are doing that day so here are some examples that i wrote down so you don't want to say students will write a summary of the mystery in the backyard that's what they're doing that day but what's the learning that's taking place the learning that's taking place is going to be i can summarize an in a fictional text using a coherent and organized paragraph boom that's the learning that's taking place you don't want to be specific and say here's what we're doing today i want to know more about but what learning is happening in that day so the way that we do this is that we make the learning target a specific action and we tie that to an explicit outcome so you want to tell learners exactly what you are going to observe from the learning that's happening so the freebie so if you were to click this little download the sheet here it's going to give you a freebie that looks like this okay so it's a daily learning like planning page and so let's kind of really quick go through some of these so that you have an idea of how to use this so one of the um units and i'm just going to kind of do this as an example let's say i'm doing a unit topic and i'm going to do it on characters so i'm going to write characters uh units and so within this unit some of my focus are going to be like the story element standard i might incorporate develop and orienting a reader or developing a character within my writing because i like to tie my reading and my writing together so i try to look for those skills that are very very similar and i can kind of put them all into one so we analyze the reading text in order for us to build it into our own writing and so i would write all of my fancy schmancy standards right here that i really wanted to focus on now i'm not going to do that for the sake of this live chat because that might take me forever because we all know how big those things are so i'm going to move on here so here is where we can build our daily learning targets and this is what i'm going to tell you do not stress about trying to put them in order yet okay we're not going to stress about that so let's kind of throw out what are some things and i want you guys in the chat so let me get you busy what are some things that you feel as though you would need to learn about characters don't be shy you could just list it out like major and minor what are some other things you don't even need to put it into a learning target i will do that work for you so tell me in the chat while i grab a drink of water what are some of those those those uh learn learnings that's gonna take place within a character unit let me know in the chat by the way guys do you see my mug i love these monks they're glass they're so cool i feel so fancy okay jeanette says comparing characters you're right on trait change yes leslie absolutely static versus dynamic grace absolutely i think that is another really good one so character traits all of these are going to be things that we look at protagonist antagonist intrinsic major minor guys do you see why we don't just throw up a standard because they're so big look at all of that information and i guarantee you you're only looking at one or two anchor standards you're not digging these are not all individual standards when we're looking at them it's like one anchor standard that you're reading right here but look at all of that learning that's going to end up taking place okay so based off of what you guys are telling me i'm gonna start to build some of these daily learning targets again we have our i can statement and so if i wanted them to be able to um understand the major and minor characters i might say i can um identify my pen is a little bit too big there but that's okay because you guys can see it better probably i can identify a major and minor character within a fictional text okay something else let's see um i think we've mentioned in here i can intrinsic extrinsic traits i can um identify and explain uh did it i messed that part up um the intrinsic traits of a character within a fictional text using evidence to support okay so i'm not going to do a ton of them but to kind of give you an idea of how i end up writing them that's basically it we know that they're going to either identify they're going to have to explain and it tells us exactly what they're going to be identifying or explaining for that learning and make sure you kind of keep this in mind this can happen for any fictional text right so this learning target would be the same if i'm doing several fictional texts that week so we might have that same one and we're kind of making those connections across all of these different texts does that make sense okay so what you're going to do is you're going to come up with your daily learning targets again they don't have to be in order yet but what i want you to think of this as as like a brain dumping area this is going to be a spot where you can basically just dump it all out what are all of the different um i can statements the learnings that are going to have to take place and if you think that it's going to work for you so much better to say like um oh i know i'm gonna do and i can't statement on intrinsic traits i know i'm gonna do an i can statement on character change i know i'm gonna do an i can statement on comparing characters you can just go ahead and write the general idea the focus and then later come back and write those i can statements the whole goal here is that you're just trying to look at what are all of the components that my students need to get in order to say that yes we've successfully met that standard that anchorage standard overall okay so that's going to be your second step is really just word vomiting do you like that word word vomit [Laughter] some people don't like that all right so that is gonna be the second step now once you do that all right once you do this then you are going to want to do step three and in step three we're going to build the progression all right this is going to be step three so here's how i like to present step three to you i want you to think about a little baby oh so cute little baby comes out um trent says blaine was an ugly baby when he came out i have pictures so um when you think about a little baby when they come out right they need help with everything they need help being fed they need their diapers changed they need their heads to be held up but as they get older they start to follow this natural progression right and they are able to then hold their heads up they're starting to learn how to roll um they're starting to learn how to sit up they're learning how to crawl they're then learning how to stand up and from standing up they're learning how to walk and then from walking it's like falling because blade did that a lot have really cute video of that happening he was walking towards us there it was awesome so when we think about that natural progression how we learn is a natural progression and what we teach is also going to be in this natural progression i'm not going to talk about character change unless we already know how to analyze characters there is a very natural progression to how we present the information i'm not going to have my students multiply um you know three digits by two digit numbers unless we know how to add and subtract so you have to think about what is this natural progression for how you are going to present the information i'll be honest with you when you start to kind of identify this natural progression you might need to make changes and that's okay i know for the first i think it took me like a year i think i went through an entire year of creating these um i would go back and i would say nope i would like this lesson here versus this lesson or this didn't end up working out i want to make sure that i hit on this a little bit more um so you might find yourself adapting and changing these as you go the whole goal is that you want to get these to the point where you feel really confident that you don't really have to write out true lesson plans anymore you're using this as a reference guide now i'm going to come back to this in just a second as far as like are building our progression but i just want to take a pause and i want you to really listen to me okay so i know i had probably a really catchy title for this no more lesson plans and you guys are probably like man bridge is going to show us not how not to write lesson plans yes and no i think here's the thing we have to write lesson plans right um i can sit here and tell you that even as a almost 10 year teacher right teaching for almost 10 years at this point that i still really benefit from having something that is written out and that i really know where i'm going in my lessons when i just show up and i'm like it's all in the noggin i kind of know where i'm going my lesson doesn't go as well but when i really sit and plan things out and i'm able to um understand like where i'm going my purpose my why and understand that natural progression i am a way more effective teacher so here's the thing writing lesson plans is inevitable you're going to write lesson plans what i'm going to help you with is how to write them effectively and how can we plan and use our time so that we're not wasting it week by week i don't plan week by week i plan unit by unit or topic or you know standards i plan long term and not short term planning by that week by week by week that's not going to help you as a teacher because i mean go back to that constant like stopping and getting distracted and moving on to these other things you're never really going towards that end the goal the why i want to help you get to that point where you're going towards the end right and you're not thinking okay so i did this part did this part this part so what am i going to do next week i need to go here here here instead of doing that be proactive which is what these lesson plans are going to do for you they're going to help you be proactive and you're going to know exactly what you're doing you're going to have that progression you're going to have your ended mind and now if you feel like you want to fluff it up and add some really cool stuff then add some cool stuff i do that all the time there's nothing wrong with that but these plans when you think of it more as a unit a topic big standards a time frame you are going to be more focused and effective as an as an educator and you're going to not spend so much time writing your lesson plans every week that's the goal that we're trying to get to not having to spend hours upon hours writing out these lessons okay i'm done with my my soapbox so let's go ahead and let's talk about building this progression so i mentioned to you guys that we have to think about the natural progression um and i'm going to show you right now um an actual an example of these lessons that i've kind of come up with now this is a launching writing workshop i used these to launch a writing workshop i think i used these about two two years ago i want to say is when i use these and this is the example that i give you it's not absolutely perfect but it works really really well so if you want to use these for your launching writing workshop feel free to go ahead and do that so let me go ahead and move you guys over and let's talk about this launching writing workshop so this is going to be the template now when you look at when you download this template it's not going to be this pretty this is the example let me show you what the template looks like this is what it's going to look like for you okay it's basically a table i already have it formatted for you it's going to make a forced copy so it's going to send it right to your google drive please make sure that you are logged in to the correct google drive that you want it to go to or else you're going to think but it didn't get there it did it just might have sent it to a totally different one i have like four or five google accounts so i totally feel you in that situation um so it's going to be a google doc and the google doc is going to have all of these pieces in here for you all right so when we build that natural progression this is going to be where you build it so essentially what you're doing is you're taking let me see if i can oh at one point there we go i did it guys look at that um so at what you're going to do is you're going to take all of these learning targets and you're going to think okay how am i going to teach these learning targets and what order am i going to put them in that makes sense again i can't talk about character change unless i know how to analyze characters i can't analyze characters unless i know what an intrinsic trait and an extrinsic trait is i can't really you know focus on the right character if i'm not looking at how you know the difference between what character feelings are versus character traits i can't really go into any of that until i know what the major and minor character is so you have to understand that natural progression and build from there so you're going to take these daily learning targets and then you're going to be placing them in to this lesson plan template these are going to be your unit plans that you will use year after year you can revise edit you can add in some fluff but this is going to be where we build in that natural progression and so inside of here you're going to notice you have lessons 1 through 10 all right and then you're gonna have a spot for a topic that topic is what you see here where it says like extrinsic traits change comparing um major and minor it's gonna be a very like quick here's kind of what you're doing here's the focus of what's going on here and then you're going to have your objective your objective is your learning targets this is where you write your i can statements and then finally you're going to have those lesson plans so i want you to build in your progression here with these objectives and the topics build your progression i like to tell you try to write these plans well in advance to where you can sit on it for about a day or two and then come back and reevaluate and determine whether or not you feel really comfortable for me i always feel like i have to walk away for a little bit and then like come back to it and and assess whether or not i did it in the right order um so let's go back and i'm gonna show you my example so this was an example for for my launching writing workshop and within here we had this progression of where we personalized so we established this writing workshop we're talking about stamina we're talking about creating a writer's notebook because all of that was needed in order for us to do the next lessons and these next lessons here we're going to talk about finding a story we're still building that stamina we're generating ideas again we're building that natural progression where that's really all we focused on we focused on a variety of different story ideas that we could generate as writers and so we were reading different texts from alexander in the no good horrible very bad day to the library mouse we were talking about ish where we could just create like a drawing to help us come up with ideas uh we also had grandpa green we had the seashore book all of these were in hopes to help us build that stamina to help us build and generate ideas within our writing so these this is going to be where you really formulate your lesson plans overall all right you guys with me so far are you feeling pretty good so once you build that progression then the next step uh which i believe is step number how many steps am i on am i on four i think i'm on four my next step is to plan my lessons and my assessments this is going to be where you really write it out okay now here's the thing i'm gonna stop and again i really want you to listen to me because when i say i want you to plan out your lessons i don't want you to go so detailed that you feel like you're putting yourself into a box does that make sense what i really want you to focus on is just those really good teaching strategies because here's the thing my friends is that the standards that we teach year after year they do not change all right the progression that natural progression in which you're going to present the information does not change right you will never ever compare and contrast characters analyze characters until they know how to identify the traits of a character you will never ever do that because it's not the natural progression for how kids will learn the information what does change are the texts that you read some of the activities that you'll do what changes is how we present the information to our students so i don't want you to go to the extent where you feel like you're putting yourself into a box with these lesson plans because as soon as you put yourself into the box you're going to get stuck in that feeling of i'm just doing the same thing year after year my creativity is fried and i don't want you to get to that point we want to still be creative we want our kids to have fun we want to be able to incorporate their interests we want to change with our books that we're reading because giving kids new texts is important so what i want you to focus on is just some of those really good teaching practices that you're going to use year after year after year like i'll be honest when i do summarizing characters one of the activities that i do year after year after year is that i take the text that we read and then i will create three or four different summarize paragraphs paragraphs that are summarized like summarizing paragraphs and some of them one of them is a really good one and all the others have things that are wrong with them either they're um like a just a retelling like a then and then and then and then and then or something where it has like dialogue in it or something where it doesn't really have accurate information it's all over the place and what i do is i have my students take those and they will always read them in group my hair is in my face my hair my students will always read those in group and then they will determine and analyze which one of those is a really good summary i do that year after year that will never ever change because i think that it's a good practice for kids to have i think it's something that they enjoy we always enjoy doing it and it's always a really great opportunity for me to build conversation with my kids so when i do my unit on summarizing i will always incorporate that activity so here's kind of the end with like the lesson planning and assessments just find a really good progression right i want you to think about how are you going to present the lesson so presenting the lesson giving them the information what are maybe some activities that you could possibly do and when you can create like a list of activities that you could do off on the side almost like a bank of activities that you can pull from and if you want to go as far as going ahead and preparing that bank of activities that again you could just pull from and not have to stress about then do it but you don't necessarily have to do that right here and right now okay this is just to help get all of those ideas and flush it out onto paper so that you have kind of that progression building your assessments how are you going to know if your kids have achieved and met that learning target for the day is it going to be an exit ticket is it going to be something that they completed during their independent work and they submitted to you is it going to be a quick quiz like what is it going to be that signals to you here's this learning target and yet my students have absolutely checked it off okay i want to go back to my lessons here and i want to talk to you a little bit about that um in detail so when i looked at this here did you see donna's question i did not what is donna's question um do you build your units by standards or by subject so donna it kind of changes for what i am teaching hold on i need a drink of water so to be honest it changes for what i'm teaching um for the most part the way that i will plan my lessons for bridging literacy as i focus on the unit itself and i use the bridging literacy cheat sheet which i think i'm going to have trent put that into the uh chats so he's going to put the cheat sheet there it's a free product that you guys can go and grab and it already has all of the units designed and it has those reading targets in there and so i just basically use that and i say okay within this unit here's the things that i need to teach and then i just kind of build my lessons from there if i'm doing it based off of you know math i base it off of units so we have like the algebra unit the place value unit if i'm looking at science or social studies you know how we have those really big like overarching um focus areas like life science or spa or space science or those types of things i then kind of break those down into more tangible units so i might have several units within like space science um and then like moon phases or something to that extent and then i'll plan it based off of that i think the big key here is you have to kind of use what your district is giving you um as a guide and determine okay so here's what they're giving me here's how my brain actually works the best and then just make it your own it can be a unit a topic standards whatever you think about just kind of make it a nice focus you know what's your your end focus your end goal for the whole thing i hope that makes sense okay so let's look at this lesson plan here so here you're gonna see that we wrote down okay here are some of the things that we want students to do we want this to be like a focus area here where they come in they know how to stay in their seat they know pencils moving fingers typing they understand you know best writing skills and then we talk about pictures and objects we present the story we activate prior knowledge and then we allow students to start to assemble some of those books so again it's not like i'm dictating every single movement i can definitely change out wilfred gordon i don't have to use that book i can make it something a little bit different i can add in some little new things but i think the good teaching piece the building the anchor charts the activating the prior knowledge all of those elements are going to be things that i do every single single year because i know it is good teaching practices so if i go to the next day again we're talking about the bookish here we've read it as a student here are kind of some of the big important pieces that we want students to be able to take away and then we're going to have students do some of these following activities the kids always really love these activities and it's funny because i still have kids who will do like ish drawings and they'll write little stories and we kind of hang them up and put them around the classroom so uh yeah so it's again meant to help you as a guide it's you flushing out all of your information so that you know exactly where you're going to be going with that lesson if i was talking about uh characters and i was going back to that whole character unit that i was showing you earlier then i might talk a little bit about major and minor characters i might talk maybe even have an image of an anchor chart that i could possibly use there i might have a very variety of texts that i could possibly use to help teach major and minor characters i might even have my graphic organizer ready to go and attached on that so that way i know that these are going to be the elements that i use every single year and again i can pull uh different activities out from the bank so that i can make it fun and engaging so maybe even we had different movies i know this was an activity that i did one year for major and minor but we had different movies that i know for a fact my kids had had seen um and then i would pull like pictures of major and minor characters and so i would have kids in groups and they would have to take those pictures and they would sort the pictures of major and minor and then we would have a discussion of well how did you know that that was a major character and how did you know that that was a minor character and so it's a really fun activity that we get to do it's engaging doesn't necessarily mean i'm going to do it every single year but it's there for me to be able to use it so you're going to build and write your lesson plans in that fourth one and in the fifth one the last step it's going to be the one that is the most important as you teach these lessons as you build these lessons take notes and revise you will need to revise do not think that as soon as you write it it is set in stone and you are never going to come back to revision and editing and making them better definitely come back and make them better um you'll find things new activities ideas that you can throw in and you could just kind of add it into the notes section add it into the material section so that you know that is a possibility for when you're ready to come back and teach these units in general so i hope that helps to really make sense for you guys but that's my process for lesson planning and i'm gonna go back to this right i don't like to lesson plan by week i think of it as okay what's my unit what's my topic what's my end goal and i plan that way so yes you are still lesson planning however we're being proactive in our lesson planning and so i mentioned earlier at the very start of this live chat and i said you might not want to do that this year but you can get a head start into next year and this is what this is going to do for you so next for like over the summer then maybe the next month or however it may be i want you to start thinking about okay well what are some of those like beginning units that i start with take out the progression that your district gives you whether they do or do not give you think about those overarching big units you have a summarizing unit you have a character unit you have a story elements unit you have you know your introductory to reading and writing workshop units so all of those are going to be those big focus areas whether you're teaching math you might be having algebra um you might have a multiplication unit you might have a place value unit if you're in content you have units and content that you're going to teach think about those big overarching units and start planning for those in advance start to build this now i recommend that you try to stay a unit in advance right so i might start the year ready to go with my character unit because i personally think characters should be taught top before story elements but that's my personal opinion i know there are a lot of people out there that think story elements should be taught i am just not one of them people okay so if i know i'm gonna start with my characters unit while i'm teaching in characters i might go ahead and start planning for my next unit which is going to be story elements and so i'm planning for story elements i'm writing a little bit every single day and so i'm not preparing for the next week i already know what i'm doing next week i feel prepared for next week i'm planning for the next unit so that when i get there i can start on the next and then once you have a good year under your belt with these unit plans you're gonna find that you're coming in a lot less stressed you're gonna feel like you have it more put together you're not spending hours upon hours planning out your activities and your lessons and you know exactly where you're going why because when we understand our why our what becomes easier we have to know our why and these unit plans the way that we create these plans is going to help to define your why so that you can then start to create your what and just be ready to go the next day okay so i'm sorry i tricked you with my title no more lesson plans but can i say no more weekly lesson plans is that fair can i say it that way i hope so don't forget if you have not and you were coming in a little bit late i do have it for you um over here is the um no more lesson planning workbook guide so this is what it looks like here for you i go through all of the steps that we talked about today i kind of lay it out for you here and there are some little freebie templates that you can use to help to start develop these now if you are somebody who has a team of people that you work with and you're like i plan as a team you are in a much better position you can share a document with your team you can help to start develop these follow the progression that i presented to you here in this live chat tonight because if you follow this progression it's going to be so much easier to plan out those lessons at the end of the day again because you will understand your why your what will be easier um do you guys at this point have any questions for me did you see the one probably does it take to complete any units it depends on how big the unit is going to be but i'll be honest with you i and i think it's because of my time experience building learning targets and understanding units i've done a lot of research when it comes to the anchor standards i've done a lot of research when it comes to how to craft learning targets and building that progression so i would tell i would say that if i was to sit down right now and i was to say okay here's the unit that i'm going to focus on i'm going to go ahead and build my learning targets i could have my learning targets my progression my unit all situated maybe not my detailed plans but i could have all the other elements pretty much ready to go in about 45 to minutes to an hour 45 minutes to an hour that's probably i mean i'm being pretty gracious in that 45 minutes to an hour it could quite possibly just take me 30 minutes to craft them um but then the lesson plans might take me a little bit longer because again you're looking for different texts you're kind of pulling out the stuff that you've been just kind of holding into these like lesson plan books you're putting it into a developed unit plan that you're following year after year so juliet says how do you keep track of all of the book stories that you have this would be uh this would help with organizing literacy materials for unit planning if you use uh the app book buddy i do not um so for me the way that i pretty much keep track of it is that i would create a mentor list um i think in the bridging literacy community i do have a mentor list material i got to double check because it's probably in the old forum um since we've like redone the community if you've been in there recently it's in the old forum you have to go back and kind of dig into those pieces but there is a mentor list and so what i did and you could do this on a scratch of paper it does not have to be fancy okay but what i would do is i would sit down and as i would find a materials i would write um you know the library mouse and then i would put where i got it from i would say picture book got it from the library and then or my own personal library and then i would say where it is like where is it located and so i would keep that paper with my unit plans so that that way i was building a list and as i found new materials i would just add to it um you could do this in a notes app you could do this on a spreadsheet within google drive and kind of keep all of your materials let's say if you had a character unit you would have those lesson plans you would have the spreadsheet of your mentor list and then all of the activities that you come up with all in that folder in your google drive so that when you're ready to teach your character unit you can go and look at your plans you have all your materials there and you're not having to like pull from all of these different locations if that makes sense so alicia not henry sorry about that girl so sorry um says i want to purchase your bridging literacy can i still do it i also purchased your book oh thank you so much i appreciate you purchasing the book um it's gonna be here in what we have like a week and a half it's not much longer it's gonna be here really soon the 21st is when it should be um in person in your hands i'm very very excited and also incredibly nervous at the exact same time um yes you can absolutely look into bridging literacy if you go to bridgingliteracy.com you can look at the membership there which it's a one-time fee so i know we've kind of done some changing over the year um to really kind of figure out what works best for everyone and to be honest i think a one-time payment you're in you get everything so as we update and as we add things as we do zoom chats um you will always gain access to that as a member so go and check it out it's just a one-time payment to enter into the community you get a ton of free resources and you get some really good discounts listen i'm gonna tell you guys i mean lean in like come a little bit closer to me okay you you you're listening so i'm really excited because i think i'm gonna cross my fingers i think maybe next week we are really going to work hard to next week start to launch our anchor standards i am so stoked about this now what this is going to focus on is to help provide you with professional development on really unpacking anchor standards and we're gonna do this for fourth fifth and sixth grade because that's my that's my niche that's what i do this is where i'm at i'm a fourth through sixth grade teacher and so what we're gonna look at is every zoom chat and i'll do two of these live as like a live chat for everybody to kind of get a taste of it but then if you want to purchase all of the rest of them there is going to be a price where you get to do a zoom call with me and it's more of a collaboration i'll give you materials and all of these things but we're going to look at an anchor standard so for instance anchor one for literature we'll look at that anchor one for literature for fourth fifth and sixth grade we're going to unpack it look at it as a vertical alignment and how it kind of um progresses over the the three grade levels uh we're going to talk about activities that we can have texts that we can end up using we're also going to build learning targets together so it is a true unpacking of the standards i'm gonna be releasing the first two lives so anchor one for literature anchor one for informational it's gonna happen in may all of those dates are gonna be released very very soon but if you end up joining the community now you're going to get a really good discount on this professional development a really good discount so chelsea asked about the blc is it a one-time fee lifetime or a one-time yearly fee and i think this is like clear that up yeah we're all for active as of march 1st i think yeah so since march 1st we have now made it a lifetime you pay one time that's it you will never pay ever again for the blc stuff nothing ever again um so that is it you have that one-time payment and then you get it for life but blc members that were active are grandfathered in yes they don't there's no new payment right and if you are a blc member as of you know before march 1st um you are grandfathered in you should not be having any other payments you should not get you know um yeah there was a ton of confusion we do apologize about it but it was like mass chaos trying to figure all that stuff out with wix and let me tell you guys i am a teacher but i am not a website designer and neither is my husband so um we ended up getting it it's gonna be just a one-time if you were already in the bridging literacy committee you were grandfathered and you should not have been charged for anything whatsoever so if you did just let us know we can get that separate from anchors that's um units or yes yes the units were not rolled into that unless you were way long ago yeah um so heather says i'm a middle school teacher is bridging literacy for me eighth grade science and um getting a master in reading okay so bridging literacy the focus of bridging literacy is mainly going to be for reading and writing teachers now can i will i say that it will work for eighth grade absolutely i think it will work for eighth grade in fact um i think in eighth grade you're really starting to tie more of that reading and writing component together because you're responding a lot more to what it is that you're reading and that's exactly what bridging literacy does it helps to build the connections between the reading and the writing piece of it um as far as a science teacher i probably would say that this is not a best fit for you right now now if you were to change and say hey now i'm starting to do 8th grade reading come back and talk to me because i think this is going to be something that you would really really benefit from um but not so much for science i'm going to say that it's mainly for upper elementary can go into middle school but just for reading and writing teachers only um i think that may have been it third grade thoughts i may have missed this but i just got a new curriculum and i struggle to figure out what lesson planner to use i love to write my plans i don't think i really actually touched on this so when i talk about building these lesson plans i build them as the unit so i'm going to come back and i'm going to show them to you again so let's say i write these as the unit itself but when i go to actually look at my week and what i'm going to be teaching for the week i will use the digital planner um i don't have it pulled up here and i'm probably not going to pull it up for you guys but it is the planner that michelle and i create with teaching on the double you can head over to teachingonthedouble.com i will tell you we have the new 20 20 hold on i'm gonna get this right 2021 through 2022 that's next school year right we have those releasing may 1st um so right now the only planners that we have on our site is going to be for the january to december 2021 planner but we're gonna have the 2021 starts in july first and it goes all the way to the end of june for 2022 so that's the school year those are going to be released may 1st and that's the planner i use so basically what i will do is on you know the week before or maybe like during one of my specials i'll kind of take a look at what my plans what i have for my plans and then i'll just kind of write them in okay this is what i'm gonna look at lesson two on this piece and this is what i'm gonna focus on it makes it really easy and it's more of a snapshot versus a true lesson plan um it's a way for me to just kind of look at everything that i have going on for the day and then just going from there this is kind of my detailed i'm kind of brain dumping all of the information there so i hope that makes sense okay i think i got everybody um as always i sincerely appreciate you guys coming and joining me in on this live chat i hope you found this beneficial um if you did not already you can still go over into the letteredclassroom.comforwardslash no more lesson plans and you can download the free guide to help you start building and crafting these unit plans so that you are not wasting hours upon hours planning every single week we're trying to get to the point where we have our purpose in mind and we can get there a lot quicker so thank you all so much for joining me um i just you guys are awesome i really was was digging the chats this this uh go-around um i so appreciate every single one of you i hope you have a fantastic week this is my last week before pssa week oh my heavens i can't believe it so um wish me luck on that so i hope you all have a fantastic week and i will see you all next time bye you

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

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Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, classroom decor, first year teacher, classroom setup, classroom organization, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, education, how to be a teacher, how to teach, new teacher, teacher youtuber, teacher vlog, weekly teacher vlog, classroom ideas, classroom inspirations, teacher organization, upper elementary teacher, teacher life, new teacher tips, tips for teachers, lesson planning, lesson plans

Id: yvwXovcN5bo

Length: 87min 37sec (5257 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021