The one thing teachers should do during Christmas to rock the next half of the year.
We are in the last stretch of our wonderful Christmas break. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself!! I hope all of you rested and got prepared for the rest of the year.
There is one thing I want you to do before you go back to school. I have done this for a few years and it definitely helps me stay focused throughout the year. PLAN YOUR YEAR, well the rest of your year.
Each year I create a rough draft of what I will teach and when, and what special activities I want to do. Sorta like my own pacing guide.You may use a pacing guide in your school but in this topsy turvy school year, we’ve pretty much thrown that out the window.
Keeps Me on Track and Focused
What creating a yearly plan does for me is it lets me look far enough ahead to prep for units and activities. Because the whole year is planned I can easily move lessons around from week to week or add in new things I want to do. I add ideas and details throughout the year. I stay focused so I don’t skip standards or important activities. This works great for ADHD teachers like me, I constantly have random ideas, that I need to put somewhere.
Complete lesson plans faster
This also helps me write lesson plans super fast. I already know what I am going to teach and the major details like the text I’ll use and the objectives I’ll be teaching. So when I create my lesson plans I just need to add in the other details on my lesson plans. This means I have my lesson plans done a few weeks in advance. So I am not rushing on Monday morning to get prepared or Friday after school getting everything ready for the next week. This makes planning so fast.
Why Spend the Time
The simple answer is to reduce stress, we all know teaching is hard enough. Here are a few more reasons if you need them…I create a yearly plan to ensure I have time to include fun activities and units I’ve created while still teaching the standards to fidelity.
I change activities from year to year but there are some that I have done for years. For about the first 10 years I thought I hosted a huge luau for my student at the end of the year. We spent the month of April ( in between finishing up state testing) learning all about Hawaii, its culture, the state,and reading fiction and nonfiction about Hawaii. During this unit students created timelines of hawaiian history, read and reenacted folk tales, learned words in hawaiian and and learned hula, and so much more. I could not possibly plan, teach, create, and tweek this lesson in just a few days before I start teaching it. That would be stressful.
Now let me say I create a VERY rough draft. I don’t add all the details, that would take too long and when plans have to be changed you’ll be upset you spent so much time trying to make them perfect.
My Simple “Planner”
Normally I just use my desk calendar to plan out my year using a pencil. But again this year has been a whirlwind of school open on Monday and closed on Tuesday so this year I decided I needed a digital way to plan my year. I created a simple google doc and inserted a table. Think of this as a working document, you will be adding and moving things around on it all year. For me this works perfectly, you can swipe it here.
Just copy and paste each section, add in your standards and lessons you plan to teach. That’s it. Don’t spend too much time perfecting each week. Add in items discover more resources you plan to use. Remember this is a working document. At the end of the year make a copy of this document and before school starts plan your next year.
Teachers, please take 30 minutes this week to create a rough draft for the rest of the school year you Friday’s and Monday’s will thank you.
