Preparing to Plan
5 Tips to Make the Most of Your Planning for the New School Year
Goals set by educators become unattainable at times, but careful preparation can turn your lesson plans into successful achievements.
Getting ready for the new school year is a huge task experienced by millions of new and seasoned teachers alike. Effective educators need efficient ways to make the most of their time. Proper preparation can assist in achieving your educational goals for the year. Use the tips below to make the most of your lesson planning.
- Reinvent yourself. Do you remember how you where when you first started teaching? You were excited and eager to give those students all you had. Reinventing yourself can recapture this spirit. Start your planning by reading manuals designed for new teachers. Unique and innovative ways of teaching are always being developed. First year teaching guides are useful for experienced teachers also, because they offer new techniques for solving old problems. Additionally, reevaluating teacher competencies can make you more aware of the practices you forget to exercise during the year. Focusing on new ideas each year makes planning more enjoyable.
- Bring out the best. In your planning, remember to set high standards. The best business professionals know that having high standards will bring in more money. When you grocery-shop, you pay a little extra at the store with the highest standards for quality and service. If you need an operation, you may not mind working harder to find surgeons who have the best medical standards. Professionals expect this. The same is true for education as it is in many areas of life. If you ask the most successful teachers, they will tell you students don’t mind giving a little extra effort to meet higher standards because they know the quality of education is better. As a professional, you know what your students can and cannot do. By setting high standards, your students will admire your professionalism, and you will still accomplish a great deal even if you do not achieve everything you set out to achieve.
- Theme it! Develop a clear vision for your entire year by using a clear theme. Developing a consistent theme to use throughout the year will assist you in achieving your goals by keeping you organized and focused. For example, if you are a language arts teacher, you may want to visit a different country or region each month as a thematic element and gear your lesson plans toward the literature with plots set in unique places. Math teachers may want to use difficulty level as a theme. Several subjects can apply ethnicity as a theme incorporating diversity. One example would be a social studies teacher who fulfills state requirements by incorporating history months into lesson plans. African-American, Hispanic, Women’s, Native-American, Asian, and Jewish history months are popular for art, history and music. Themes can be as simple as shapes and colors. After your vision for the year is clearly defined, you can then plan lessons month by month. Inform your students on the first day of school about your plans and get them involved with the preparation. This will keep them motivated throughout the year. Thematic planning will also make weekly lesson planning and material gathering easier.
- Imitation is the best form of flattery. If you want your students to have the best, look at what the best schools are doing and adapt it to your lessons. This is not stealing. This is inspiration. Some of the best and most renowned professionals in the world have used others for inspiration without being accused of stealing. Shakespeare mimicked Christopher Marlowe. Van Gogh imitated Ukiyo-e. You may not have heard of Marlowe and Ukiyo-e, as countless others have emulated unknown greats and have become even more successful from that inspiration. You can easily find your inspiration for lesson plans on free websites such as schoolnotes.com by putting in a zip code and viewing other teachers’ web pages. You can also visit your local board of education’s website, look for a specific school, and view the faculty’s pages.
- Prepare for anything. Have you ever shown up to work during teacher planning week and found out that your assignment had completely changed? If that has happened to you, you’re not alone. Many teachers of all grade levels and subjects have found themselves in this predicament. Drastic changes at the start of the year are common; keep in mind that students will be taken out of or put in your class. Eliminate some of the hassle of changing plans and keep your work neat by entering everything in pencil or erasable ink. The same goes for class rolls, textbooks, grade books, seating charts and calendars.
Careful planning is pertinent for proficient teaching. Start preparing early and develop a clear vision. With a little creativity and foresight you can turn lesson planning into less of a chore and make it something you’ll learn to adore.
The copyright of the article Preparing to Plan in Teacher Tips/Training is owned by Sophia Russell-Baca. Permission to republish Preparing to Plan must be granted by the author in writing.
