Planning with Purpose

This past week I had a conversation with one of my grade level coworkers about the benefit of our lesson planning. We celebrated ourselves for the effort we put into our lesson plans, and discussed the success we've had as a grade level over the years because of the way we plan. Yes, you need to celebrate yourself as an educator every once in a while, it's healthy and you absolutely deserve it! For me, it was a great reminder about the intentionality behind our planning, and it was a reflection of how we are constantly working on improving those plans so that we can be effective year after year.

In order to make our lesson planning effective, we make sure to plan with a purpose. What does that look like, you might ask? Keep on reading to find out how you can be effective in your planning and PLAN WITH A PURPOSE!

Planning Tip #1: Weekly Team Planning Meeting

• Part of the success behind our purposeful planning is meeting weekly to discuss current academics and what to expect/teach for the upcoming week. We go through each part of our day, share out reminders of upcoming tasks and assessments, as well as plan out future events and activities. Each grade level in our building meets weekly, which I believe contributes to the fluidity of our school as a whole. Taking time to sit down and chat about our plans helps streamline communication and makes our team feel unified. While not all schools and districts implement this structure, it's important to take the time to converse with one's grade level and compare each other's pacing of the curriculum. Intentionally setting up time to plan for what to teach automatically makes you more prepared and successful as a teacher.

Planning Tip #2: Shared Planning Space

• In order to make sure we are all following the same plans and keeping each other accountable during the school year, we as a grade level keep our lesson plans on one main document. This document is shareable and accessible to everyone in our team, and it drastically improves our planning. We can edit in real time, see each other's work and follow the same plan together, everyday. This planning space is organized into a table format where each section/subject of the day has it's own space. The table follows the schedule of our day, which makes it easy to flow into the next academic activity. Whether you plan as a team or not, I highly recommend putting your plans in a table/spreadsheet/organized template! It's not only effective to organizing your day to day lessons in your brain, but it's also neat and tidy to look at! P.S. You want to know the craziest thing about this shared planning space? We made a simple table in Microsoft Word, and that's what we've used for years!

Planning Tip #3: Assigned Content Roles

• Not only do we have a shared planning space, but each person within our grade level takes on a certain subject or scheduled activity. We are solely responsible for planning out each week for that one subject area, and we allow ourselves to form a strong understanding of that specific content. Within our shared planning document, we provide in depth descriptions of each lesson per day. We expand upon the learning standards and objectives, summarize the lesson activities, describe any assessment aspect to the lesson, as well as provide supplemental resources and extension opportunities. By doing so, we find ourselves working smarter, not harder. It's more effective to provide detailed explanation of a lesson, plus it lightens a teacher's workload from having to plan all lessons, everyday, for every week.

• See below for a list of what we provide for each lesson:

- Learning Objective

- Learning Goal in Student Perspective

- Academic Standards

- Activities

- Assessment

- Scaffold/Extension Opportunities.

• There's definitely opportunity to grow in this planning tip, such as switching who plans which subject each year. It allows you to tackle a different planning challenge as a teacher and gives you a different perspective. Food for thought!

Planning Tip #4: Learning Goal Implementation

• Last year we started implementing a specific learning goal for our lessons. This was a broad initiative for our students to take ownership of their learning. Rather than telling kids what they would learn by the end of the lesson, we gave them a chance to identify the goal themselves. In other words, we shifted the language from "you will learn" to "I will learn." For example, instead of saying "you will count to 50," the kids say, "I can count to 50." It builds awareness for the students about what exactly they're learning, and it builds up their confidence level. Stating one's ability to achieve a goal transforms their mindset into a more positive and capable perspective. We add these learning goals to our lesson plans and integrate it into our lesson briefs/debriefs.

Planning Tip #5: Enrichment Opportunities

• After we breakdown each part of a lesson in our plans, we provide an area dedicated solely to extensions and enrichment. We provide various videos, games and activities throughout each content area so that we can create more excitement, participation, and above all, comprehension. Through digital resources, crafts and projects, supplemental books and more, we enhance our lessons for our students. Did I mention this is ALL SUPPLEMENTAL? That means we are adding additional content to our curriculum that we contribute ourselves. Lesson planning isn't just about reading from a teacher manual, believe it or not. We are fortunate to have a community of teachers dedicated to sharing such resources and ideas, and we are thankful to have them at our disposal. Teaching is hard, and anytime an educator can support or encourage another, the teaching profession gets even stronger.

While these planning tips may not fully encompass all that's needed to plan with purpose, I do believe they have contributed to the success of our own grade level plans. I highly encourage all educators to intentionally plan what you teach, so that you may become a more effective teacher and professional.

Sharing Perspective. Encouraging Perseverance.

~Kendall