Hello Class!
This week’s class session was both informative and interesting. I’m not sure about all of you, but I thought watching a teacher conduct a lesson was extremely helpful as it provided me with various ideas and strategies. Adapting a complete lesson plan helped me to better understand how to utilize the most efficient resources and apply my time management skills to my lessons.
Through my additional research, I learned that many administrators and principals require teachers to turn in their lesson plans to be reviewed. Furthermore, there has been much controversy over whether or not lesson plans are even effective or necessary. Whereas some teachers create step-by-step daily lesson plans, other teachers refrain from planning a detailed lesson and instead think on the spot. Many professionals believe that teachers who write up detailed lesson plans, instead of jotting down notes and briefly planning, are failing to focus on the big picture of the content they’re teaching.
I have linked articles for you all to explore:
1) How to move out of the day-by-day lesson planning trap and think big picture https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/day-by-day-lesson-planning-trap/
2) It’s Time to Stop Requiring Lesson Plan Submission https://www.weareteachers.com/stop-requiring-lesson-plans/
3) Why Lesson Plan?
https://www.chalk.com/introduction-to-lesson-planning/why-lesson-plan/
What do you think? I want to hear how effective you think lesson plans are and if you believe teachers should be required to turn them in for approval or not. Do you envision yourself making a detailed lesson plan for each lesson you teach, or do you think that’s unrealistic? Are principles too focused on the lesson plan write up instead of the ways in which teachers actually teach the content?
I’m certainly torn about these ideas and I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone’s perspectives!
-Christina Caluori
Greetings, Christina! Thanks for raising these questions about lesson plans and providing us with a few different sources expressing different perspectives on the matter.
I am not sure I am in a position to give an informed opinion regarding the usefulness of detailed lesson plans! I have less teaching experience than any other student in our class; whereas the rest of you either recently got your undergraduate degrees in Education or have lived actual grown-up lives as teachers for some significant period of time, I majored in subjects totally unrelated to teaching as an undergraduate and have never had a real teaching job. My only teaching experience, if you can call it that, has been as a volunteer tutor at an at-risk elementary school a little over a year ago, and as a “teacher” of pretty open-ended art classes at a day camp last summer. I think the only way to know what type of lesson planning works for me is actually to plan lessons as a full-time teacher and see what happens; so I am not comfortable asserting a position on this issue as if it were a belief that I held with any significant degree of conviction. That said, during the limited teaching experience I have had, I am not sure I ever actually followed a lesson plan I had come up with! The prior knowledge, interests, strengths and difficulties of each individual student and each group of students necessitated so much extemporaneous revision and invention while teaching that the actual lesson hardly ever bore more than the broadest similarities to its plan. But, of course, I was teaching under unusual circumstances; as a volunteer tutor, I was working with children whose levels of prior knowledge were far below what was expected for their grade and had not been adequately assessed by anybody before me, so I often had to teach them things that the lesson plans I was given assumed they already knew; while at the summer camp, my primary goal was to give my charges an enjoyable experience, rather than to teach them anything in particular, so elements of the lesson plans I wrote could and must be jettisoned or extended according to student interest. I am, therefore, very interested in hearing the perspectives of my fellow students, who have held more conventional and more demanding teaching positions, on this issue.
All in all, I lean tentatively toward the camp that favors fewer and less specific lesson plans and opposes policies that require teachers to submit their lesson plans to administration. However, I feel the need to take note here of one point made by the chalk.com article, that “[t]he planning process gives teachers a chance to check their own knowledge of the concepts being taught and ensures they’ve gathered all the materials they need to teach those concepts ahead of time.” The most important thing a teacher must do to prepare for a lesson must surely be to ensure that she actually knows the material it covers! As elementary teachers, we are generalists, expected to possess an enormous breadth of knowledge on subjects that may not always be relevant to our specific interests; therefore we must continually renew our understanding of these subjects, so that we can speak on them with confidence, answer students’ questions on and encourage their own exploration of those subjects, and draw out their enthusiasm for them by showing enthusiasm ourselves.
Hi Christina!
Thank you so much for raising these questions for us this week! This topic intrigues me a lot and has been something that comes across my mind frequently when thinking about teaching in the years to come.
I agree with many points in the articles you attached for us! I thought it was especially interesting when talking about how effective lesson plans are when they are required compared to if they are not required by the administrators and principal of the school you are working at. Within my experiences working with teachers in the classroom, I have talked to them about how detailed their lesson plans are which sparked some eye rolling and hints at tension over the topic. I had a mentor that taught 5th grade, and he would let me teach math lessons in his class during my senior year of high school. I asked to see his lesson plans to see what I should be aiming to do in my time teaching. He explained to me that he did not make lesson plans, rather he made an extra copy of what the students would be doing and he would fill it out so he has notes on what to teach as the students worked through the lesson. He mentioned that the principal required more extensive lesson plans, but not for every class. This surprised me at first, but he had also been teaching for a few decades so I am sure he was very confident in his teaching strategies/plans at that point.
Although this principal was not as strict with turning in lesson plans, I acknowledge that many principals do require extensive plans submitted for each lesson. I believe that when teachers are required to turn in plans, it may make the written plans become less effective. Personally, I would be very focused on making sure my plans look long enough and have enough content planned to make my principal happy. This could start to negatively impact my classroom because my plans may become too unrealistic just because I am trying to make my principal happy.
I do envision myself making detailed lesson plans, especially during my first years teaching. This will help me stay organized and go into each day with a plan and goal for what my students should learn. As I become more experienced and comfortable as a teacher, I am sure I will not make as detailed plans.
I believe that the focus should absolutely be more on how teaching actually carries out in the classroom rather than what the written plans claim teachers will do. However, I also believe that the plans allow for teachers to teach their class in a more effective manner because they will feel more confident in what they are aiming to teach, and teachers will be able to make sure their students are making the connections between lessons daily.
Thank you for your awesome post!!
Alexa
Hi Christina!
Thank you for raising these questions.
As an organized person, and someone who just loved organization overall, I have enjoyed writing lesson plans. After reading the articles you attached I understand how having to turn in those lesson plans to your boss per se would not be effective. A teacher could have a fantastic lesson plan, but execute it in an effective way where the student’s are learning nothing. This is why I believe it is important for teachers to be evaluated by their bosses through a viewing of their instruction and teaching along with the lesson plan for that day.
I also believe that sometimes, a lot of teaching is “created” on the spot. As we saw in the video in class, the teacher said that if the student’s had known more of the vocabulary words, the lesson would have looked very different. Due to this, I do not think that teacher’s should be required to fill out the same type of lesson plan for every single lesson that they teach. Teachers should be at liberty of doing what works for them when it comes to teaching lessons. For me, I can envision myself creating some detailed outlines, however, I am not going to go into a step-by-step process in them because that will be more of an on the spot, day of thing. I would have to see how the class is acting, and other things that might effect my teaching that day. It is nice to know what direction you are heading with a lesson, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be overly detailed. Sometimes you can just note that the next day you’ll be teaching about addition by showing your students some problems on the board, or using a worksheet that you attached. If your students understand it you can go on, but if they don’t then you’ll most likely have to go further into depth on the topic, and alter the lesson for the day.
Teaching is such an on the spot type of job in my eyes, that you can plan and plan all that you want and things will most likely never go exactly as you had planned.
I know that I will be making lesson plans like Alexa said for the first years of teaching just until I get the hang of things, but they will probably become less intense as I gain more years of teaching. My mom has been teaching for 30+ years, and I can’t say I have ever seen her sit down and write out an entire lesson plans for the next day, because she has had so much experience and it is like second nature to her.
I believe that teacher’s should be evaluated on their lessons taking place, how they teach their students, and if their student’s are learning and growing within the classroom. Teacher’s should not just be based off of their lesson plans, and not all teacher’s should be forced to make traditional lesson plans if that does not fit their style or way of teaching.
Thank you for such a thought provoking topic!
Hello Christiana,
Thank you for your class reflection for this week and I also agree that viewing the classroom lesson plan unfold on video for our viewing was very helpful and educational. I received some helpful concepts on conducting lessons from the lesson plan we viewed which included a great idea for an opening to gain the students attention. Using the words in an envelope was an awesome idea that guided the teacher through the direction to teach the lesson as well as gaining an understanding as to the knowledge of the students receiving the lesson.
The school I am working at today requires lesson plans to be turned in prior to noon on Friday for the upcoming week. I will admit some teachers are not on board with this requirement for one reason or another and do not always meet the deadline of noon on Friday, this is a work in progress. I agree that some teachers question the importance of lesson plans and question the importance of lesson plans being turned in to administrators. I believe that lesson plans can be a tool used by teachers to ensure students gain the knowledge they are guaranteed if there are guidelines set by individuals in positions of leadership.
I think lesson plans are needed to ensure teachers that are new in their careers can have guidelines to follow while teaching our students. Seasoned teachers may feel as though lesson plans are not needed because they have taught for years. However, the team is not made up of seasoned teachers, there are a multitude of different members on the team and all should work from the same sheet to ensure a successful outcome.
Thank you for your reflection for this week,
Milton
Hello Christina!
I also found this past weeks class session very informative. Being able to watch a teacher go through an entire lesson was very informative and gave me different strategies that I believe could be used in the future. I also enjoyed the adapting a lesson activity we did during the class. I found the practice helpful to inform the types of things I will have to do in the future.
To address your question, I feel as though lesson plans can be a very rigid, where student learning is not developed in such a way. Student knowledge on a topic does not always grow in such sequential patterns in which a series on lesson plans lays it out to be. Students have good and bad days where they may learn better or worse based on a plethora of different reasons. Lesson plans do not always account for a teacher having to revisit topics which are not understood. I understand the thinking being collecting lesson plans for most administrations, to use them as a way of tracking what’s being taught, but just looking at lesson plans may be misleading, which is why administration should in my opinion come and watch teachers actually conduct instruction and allow for lesson plans to be used in a more individual way. If a teacher is just starting then a more structured lesson plan may be useful for them because they lack the in classroom experience that a veteran teacher would have. A veteran teacher may not need to use as structured a lesson plan because they have experience with the curriculum and teaching it, so they could just use notes or other methods to guide their teaching.
Hi Christina!
Thank you so much for your thought-provoking post! I too find the topic of lesson plans to be incredibly interesting. However, in all honesty, I am quite torn on their effectiveness.
In any type of school environment I have participated in since I was in kindergarten, organization has been key. I have always had a pencil case filled with a variety of pens, labeled folders, and color coded notebooks. Having specific organization for my school supplies helped reduce levels of anxiety. Therefore, having a lesson plan with well-thought out objectives and step-by-step instructions for how a lesson will turn out will definitely be a calming resource for me especially during my first few years as a teacher.
On the other hand, I can see how having to turn in all of your lessons plans to your principal by a certain date and time can become extremely stressful as well. As one of the articles you shared discussed, the lesson plans that will have to be turned in might just be written to please the principal. I can definitely see how this can occur. I also find it important to consider what we saw in the video from our last class session. The teacher we watched stated that she would have taken her lesson in a completely different direction if her students had known certain vocabulary words. In that case, it would difficult to write that into a plan.
Overall, I believe that lesson plans will be helpful in the my beginning years of teaching, but as I continue to grow more confidence in my abilities from experience, I think I will utilize them less and less. In conclusion, I feel as though teachers should be able to utilize whatever planning strategies they know will make their instruction the most effective.
Thanks so much again for your post,
Mimi
Hi Christina, great post! I have to admit as we are going through lesson planning each semester, I wonder is this truly necessary? I think I read in ‘We are teachers’that for new teachers, lesson planning is essential and I agree completely. After reviewing, all of the articles you provided (which were such good references), I see the importance of lesson plans, at least for teachers with 5 years of less of experience. There are several advantages to preparing lesson plans, such as: 1) ensuring lessons are aligning with standards, 2) helpful to substitutes, 3) help teachers ensure lessons are effective and consistent, and 4) gives teachers (especially new ones) confidence in lesson planning. Chalk.com reminded me to leave room for flexibility in the lesson planning. Sometimes I am so focused on filling the entire allotted timeframe that there is no room for questions or flexibility in case something unforeseen happens. I’m not sure if this even makes sense but I feel for new teachers, have lesson plans already prepared that you can just edit for your lesson would be so helpful. I think lesson plans have a place and provide tracking detail that can be used by the teacher and school when reviewing what has been taught throughout the school year. I am very interested in seeing what others think.
Hello Christina!
Thank you for your response and questions. It certainly made me think about how I would like to teach in the future.
I am a naturally organized person and I like to have a plan laid out for the day, so I like having a lesson plan template/form to fill out for each day. As other people have mentioned, however, I do recognize that a lot of teaching is done on the spot and through improvisation. That’s why I think, for me at least, I would want to lay out an initial lesson plan but not detail every step I take from start to finish. Not only would that be a lot of preparation beforehand, but it is also impossible to think of every little situation that may come up while the lesson is ongoing.
As for turning them in for approval, I think teachers should have to periodically turn them in for review, but I do not think that is necessary for every single lesson. As long as the teachers are on track for teaching what they plan to teach, there shouldn’t be a need to do daily check-ins.
Additionally, I think about how I would be as a new teacher and I would like to show my lesson plans to a person familiar with my subject so that I can collaborate and learn from teachers with more experience. As I become more familiar with the field, I can see myself focusing less on day-to-day rigid lesson plan structures and more on overarching units that eventually sum up the overall course content.
Carstyn K
Thank you so much for sharing Christina!
I was very fascinated by this week’s class session as well. The teacher going through their lesson plan was very useful. It was interesting to see a lesson plan play out in a real situation! I hope to continue to watch lesson plans like this demonstrated.
In my volunteering and practicum, I have seen how some schools have teachers send their lesson plans to administrators, while others collaborate on lessons that are automatically shared to a higher-up. Although I do believe there should be some accountability system in place to make sure that students are getting a successful education, these methods have their pros and cons. Having to send lesson plans to administration allows you to put aside time for planning, and in some cases, this requirement forces collaboration between you and your colleagues. However, the more detailed the lesson plan is required to be, the more time that takes out of the teachers’ day, and there are times where collaboration can hinder more than help.
As a teacher, I do see myself creating detailed lesson plans that I will reuse in future instruction. I also hope to collaborate with other classrooms to offload the burden of making lessons. However, I do believe that there is a certain level of detail that is unrealistic. In my eyes, more time should be spent with administrators evaluating classroom teaching in person rather than reading about it on a document.
Hopefully my future administrators and principals will take it easy on me! Thanks again for sharing!
Ashley
Hi Christina,
Thank you for bringing up such a timely topic! I really enjoyed the resources that you provided to offer additional insight into your questions.
From a future educator’s perspective, the idea of preparing multiple lesson plans for each school day is certainly daunting. I think about how much time and energy goes into each one that I prepare now for our classes and how that will translate into real-life/actual teaching and it starts to feel overwhelming. Until I read your articles, I wasn’t aware that it might be an expectation to turn lesson plans into school administration ahead of time, although as a new teacher, it was certainly my expectation to need to engage in this detailed level of planning for at least a few years.
Like William, I do not currently work as a teacher, although I have worked for central administration in a local public school division. I have a full-time human resources career that I’m trying my best to balance until such time as I’m ready to pivot careers and complete student teaching. So please know that my HR background heavily influences my thinking here. If I were a school administrator (such as a Principal/Associate or Assistant Principal) with accountability to parents, the public, and the School Board, I might consider requiring that all teachers submit weekly lesson plans in order to set the same expectations for all teachers, both new and tenured. It’s a lot easier to treat all teachers the same and require that everyone submit lesson plans than it is to single specific teachers out (new teachers, teachers with performance issues, etc.) and ask that only they submit their plans. I would view lesson plans as proactive legal defense — the proof that teachers are covering what they’re supposed to and serving as documentation that teachers are adhering to the standards set forth in the SOLs. Even experienced teachers will need to modify their lessons and plan differently when new SOLs roll out in different subjects. Additionally, in certain school districts that are in the news spotlight for whatever reason (here’s looking at you, Loudoun County), I would imagine that school administration would want the opportunity to skim through teachers’ lesson plans ahead of time to be made aware of any potentially problematic or controversial lesson content — when the spotlight is already on a school or a school district as a whole, it’s completely reasonable to take whatever proactive measures that one can. I do think it’s completely bizarre, however, that some school administrators would actively require that lesson plans be submitted ahead of time and yet not take the time to review them. To me, that’s the worst case legal scenario because those administrators cannot claim ignorance about anything that’s taught in their school’s classrooms if they have said lesson plans unviewed and stuffed in a desk drawer.
A couple of the articles mentioned the importance of lesson planning for substitute teachers. It’s more than just ensuring classroom content continuity during your planned and unplanned absences as a teacher (and there will be both!); it’s also that there is a dire shortage of substitute teachers. Want a sub on a Friday? Good luck. The vetted substitutes in the pool that stayed in the substitute pool post-COVID are in demand and they know it. As such, they have the ability to be discerning about which schools they pick up sub jobs in. To contribute to a positive impression of your classroom and your school, we must be diligent in writing down key information for substitutes, including detailed lesson plans.
For awareness, I did want to share that the Code of Virginia 22.1-291.1 establishes that School Boards provide elementary teachers at least an average of 30 minutes per day during the school week as planning time. Is 2.5 hours each week really enough to plan a week’s worth of lessons? Clearly not. But as our lesson plan repository grows over time, this time can be used to collaborate with team teachers and make adjustments and tweaks to previous lesson plans. And just for level-setting, there will absolutely be days, maybe weeks, when you will not get to use the planning time afforded to you. If administrators are not able to secure enough substitutes to cover teacher absences, teacher coverage may be cobbled together from – you guessed it – other teachers’ planning periods. (Note that most school divisions will compensate you for lost planning time, but still. You can’t always plan on having that planning time each day.)
So, after processing all of my thoughts on this, I would not be opposed to having to submit my lesson plans ahead of time to my school administration and would not view it as micromanagement. Whether or not our own lesson plans are as effective as they should be are up to us. We must constantly engage in honest self-reflection about our teaching practices and seek efficiencies whenever possible to make the most optimal use of our most limited resource, time. However, I do not envision myself bridging that potential gap with the purchase of other teachers’ resources from TPT as I do not believe that’s a sustainable or affordable long-term option. I feel like we’re learning enough practical skills in our classes here to be able to adapt already-existing resources instead of starting each lesson from scratch.
Thank you so much, Christina, for taking the time to provide such insightful resources and for asking such thought-provoking questions!
Sue Anne
Hi Christina,
Thank you for your thoughtful post! I also found our last class session to be very helpful.
Regarding your question, I think that every teacher is different, whether it be the grade level they teach, how long they’ve been teaching, or their style of teaching. If every teacher was required to submit their lesson plans for approval, it would force a lot of teachers to change what works for them. I also feel like it is difficult to determine what a “good” lesson plan is, especially if you aren’t witnessing how the teacher is instructing. In my opinion, a better way to evaluate teachers is to see firsthand how they are teaching. At the same time, I do recognize the benefits of lesson planning, so I think it would be wise for new teachers to create lesson plans until they’ve found the system that works best for them. It will provide new teachers with a reliable foundation to stand on in an otherwise foreign situation or environment.
Personally, I don’t enjoy writing lesson plans, however I do envision myself writing them in my first year(s) to avoid taking away from class time and to help me feel more confident in my skills. As I get more experience, I feel like I will have discovered a different method that works better for me. It may even share a lot of similarities with lesson plans, just without as much detail. I really liked the video we watched last class that showed how the teacher was able to adapt based on her students’ performance, and I would love to be able to do the same. I don’t think that very detailed, fully planned out lessons are conducive to that style of teaching.
Ultimately, I believe that teachers should be allowed to use whatever methods they want, so long as students are grasping the content.
Jordann
Hi Christina!
Thanks for your post, this is a very timely question to ask based on our last class and our assignments on lesson planning coming up. I agree with you that I learned a lot of information from watching the lesson in class and discussing it with our peers – it is always more helpful to see it in real time and have someone to talk to about it!
As for your question – should teachers turn their lesson plans in for approval – I am leaning towards yes but with some adjustments. Personally, I live for lesson plans because I experience anxiety when I do not know the exact details of what needs to be accomplished (probably because I lean towards perfection and away from flexibility). Lesson plans help me think about the big picture and everything that should be touched on in the content area and in the day as a whole. On top of this, I think it is important to submit lesson plans because it keeps me and the administration accountable to student learning because we have multiple eyes looking at the lesson and making sure the SOLs are met.
However, the administration needs to be active in their collection of lesson plans. Ideally, they would collect the lesson plans and look over them and make anecdotal notes about the teacher, the lesson, and the SOLs being met and looking at the school average for grades within the SOL. Collecting lesson plans is otherwise pointless if the administration is not doing check-ins on teachers to talk about the lesson plans.
I know that lesson plans are not concrete, and sometimes you do more or less than what was planned and the teacher has to be flexible in their day, but overall I think turning in lesson plans will help the teachers be confident in what they are teaching because they know beforehand what materials they need and what they will touch on, but the administration needs to be accountable in their conversations and check-ins with teachers about their lesson plans.
Hi Christina!
I think that teachers should be able to lesson plan in the way in which is most effective. This could be on an individual basis. For me, I intend to write out my lesson plans especially for my first few years of teaching. For me personally, thinking ahead is what sets me best up for success, but I know that other people really prefer to have a looser idea beforehand. I think that over time, lesson planning will become less of a need of mine just due to experience and the use of lessons again.
I really enjoyed in the readings that substitute plans were brought up. Out subs really need to have a lesson plan prepared incase you do have to miss class in a short notice.
When I have written out lesson plans, I tend to feel more confident in my ability to teach the group just due to the fact that I know what I want my end goal and steps in between to be. Now does this mean that I think that teachers should have to submit their lesson plans? I don’t think that teachers should have to submit their lesson plans unless there is a concern with said teacher. If there is any type of concern based on multiple observations, then I think it could be a good idea for teachers to have to present their lesson plans just the day of the lesson. I don’t believe that teachers who are doing very well in their classrooms should have to submit documentation of their lesson planning.
Great topic, Christina. I don’t know many people who like writing lesson plans. I still write a loose version of lesson plans for my classes. I need to have a plan for what I’m going to do. I try to estimate how much time I will devote to different components. Even though I don’t write in the UR lesson format, I’m thinking through the components all the time. Ultimately, this is where we want teachers to be. Maybe they don’t need formal plans, but they should be thinking through all the components in an effort to anticipate where the class will go.
Last year as part of the parents’ rights in education movement, a number of states tried to pass legislation that would require teachers to submit lesson plans at least one month in advance so parents might review them. The most extreme, in the state of Indiana, would have required teachers to publish their lesson plans a year in advance! These haven’t been successful (yet), but I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of them. Here is an excerpt from one article:
“Transparency bills are proliferating across the country, and proponents hope they will empower parents to scrutinize books and readings, setting up a fresh wave of battles with teachers.
Lawmakers in at least 17 state capitols and Congress are pushing legislation that would require schools to post all instructional materials online. Their goal, at least in part, is to enable parents who distrust their children’s schools to carefully examine teaching materials — enabling protests or, in some cases, giving people fodder to opt their children out. That includes materials on race and racial equity but also any other topic that might spark disagreement.”
If bills like these pass, the requirements regarding lesson planning would change drastically.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/02/transparency-curriculum-teachers-parents-rights/
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.