s/o Question for teachers - why do you rewrite your lesson plans each year?

[Anonymous]

This is a spin off of the thread on alternate certification for teachers.

If you are a classroom teacher responsible for teaching certain content, and have a lesson plan to teach that content, but get a whole new group of students with very different needs, how do you rewrite that lesson plan to now meet the needs of your different students?

Can you show me a "before" and "after" of your lesson plans (abbreviated, of course)? Do you need to completely rewrite the entire plan, or just alter it?

If you have one plan for higher achievers, and one for the less prepared in terms of background knowledge, do you need to alter it a third and forth time, for everyone in between?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a spin off of the thread on alternate certification for teachers.

If you are a classroom teacher responsible for teaching certain content, and have a lesson plan to teach that content, but get a whole new group of students with very different needs, how do you rewrite that lesson plan to now meet the needs of your different students?

Can you show me a "before" and "after" of your lesson plans (abbreviated, of course)? Do you need to completely rewrite the entire plan, or just alter it?

If you have one plan for higher achievers, and one for the less prepared in terms of background knowledge, do you need to alter it a third and forth time, for everyone in between?

There are a lot of questions here! I am working on lesson plans right now so I will answer just briefly:

-Good teachers teach students, not just content. I have 25 unique students and I have to write lesson plans that address their needs, not the needs of my kids last year.
-Many times things are handed down from admin that we have to incorporate. Sometimes this requires major re-writing of lesson plans
-There is a ton of teacher turnover. I am teaching a grade that I taught 2 years ago and none of the other grade-level teachers are still there. This years team has different ideas than the team from two years ago
-Documentation is a major issue. In an ideal world every lesson would be well documented and then handed down from year to year. In an actual world, this does not happen anywhere close to 100%
-Good teachers constantly revise and improve their methods and plans. So I use lesson plans from a previous year, but I know now what went well and what didn't and this takes a lot of revision to incorporate. Sometimes these changes are over-arching and have a domino effect in causing changes for a whole series of units or lessons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
-Good teachers teach students, not just content. I have 25 unique students and I have to write lesson plans that address their needs, not the needs of my kids last year.

OK, but I'm the PP and I still don't understand. This year I have 38 unique children, but their academic needs aren't unique. They mainly fall into two or three categories. Your 25 kids are THAT unique that you need to write 25 individual plans to address their needs? I think not. They are SO different from you 25 kids last year? I doubt it.

Most teacher I know break their lessons into High, Average, and Low or AGL OGL BGL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
-Good teachers teach students, not just content. I have 25 unique students and I have to write lesson plans that address their needs, not the needs of my kids last year.

OK, but I'm the PP and I still don't understand. This year I have 38 unique children, but their academic needs aren't unique. They mainly fall into two or three categories. Your 25 kids are THAT unique that you need to write 25 individual plans to address their needs? I think not. They are SO different from you 25 kids last year? I doubt it.

Most teacher I know break their lessons into High, Average, and Low or AGL OGL BGL.

Who said anything about writing 25 unique plans? That's silly.

Yes, my class this year is VERY different than my last class I taught at this grade level. And their progress happens at a different rate.

One of my major time-sucks each weekend is writing guided reading plans. Those are tailored to unique groups based on their current sight words, their current phonics assessment data, map data and TRC/DIBELS. How would I possibly re-use guided reading plans to meet their individual needs?

[Anonymous]

DP.

Another issue here, OP. Do you include the gathering of materials and supplies in creating your lesson plans? In elementary school--particularly the early grades, there are a lot of requirements for the physical environment of the classroom. Developing the lesson plan is only a part of that. Then, you must execute--but preparation can take a LOT of time.

I also agree with PP who said that it depends on the class. Especially with teaching young readers, there is a wide span of academic needs. But, the most important thing that PP said was that he/she teaches students. No, you don't prepare a different lesson plan for every student, but from year to year, the needs can certainly be quite different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
One of my major time-sucks each weekend is writing guided reading plans. Those are tailored to unique groups based on their current sight words, their current phonics assessment data, map data and TRC/DIBELS. How would I possibly re-use guided reading plans to meet their individual needs?

Can you cut and paste an example of what you would write for such a plan?

Are you using any kind of a curriculum, or are you literally reinventing the wheel with each reading group? That seems like a ton of wasted effort to me.

[Anonymous]

For example, could you visit a site such as this one, and cut and paste the already written plans?

DO you literally have to write ALL THIS yourself? Seems such a waste of time. This has all been done before... somewhere.

http://www.warsaw.k12.in.us/information/document-library/all-documents/guided-reading-lesson-plans-1/level-b-1

Doesnt mean you have to follow it verbatim but... why spend the time writing it all out yourself?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP.

Another issue here, OP. Do you include the gathering of materials and supplies in creating your lesson plans? In elementary school--particularly the early grades, there are a lot of requirements for the physical environment of the classroom. Developing the lesson plan is only a part of that. Then, you must execute--but preparation can take a LOT of time.

I also agree with PP who said that it depends on the class. Especially with teaching young readers, there is a wide span of academic needs. But, the most important thing that PP said was that he/she teaches students. No, you don't prepare a different lesson plan for every student, but from year to year, the needs can certainly be quite different.

No, I'm not counting preparation time in lesson planning time. This was mostly in response to a teacher who said he or she spends THREE HOURS writing and rewriting a lesson plan. !!! Every time!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For example, could you visit a site such as this one, and cut and paste the already written plans?

DO you literally have to write ALL THIS yourself? Seems such a waste of time. This has all been done before... somewhere.

http://www.warsaw.k12.in.us/information/document-library/all-documents/guided-reading-lesson-plans-1/level-b-1

Doesnt mean you have to follow it verbatim but... why spend the time writing it all out yourself?

Are you a teacher? This seems so strange to me that you think you can just print ready-made GR plans and go.

My primary issue with that would be - those aren't the books I have at my school for guided reading.

And why would I do a random word building activity when my students likely have different phonics needs?

I assess constantly and continually form lesson plans based on those assessments. Yes it is a lot of hard work but I am baffled how you think it is a waste of time. My kids consistently make a huge amount of reading progress, year after year. I do this because it works.

[Anonymous]

Although to be clear, this takes me about 5-6 hours every Sunday to write my guided reading plans. This is for 24 plans though for six different reading groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Although to be clear, this takes me about 5-6 hours every Sunday to write my guided reading plans. This is for 24 plans though for six different reading groups.

I must be missing something.

You make these plans for 6 different reading groups. Some are lower and some are higher.

You can't reuse the higher ones, for the lower reading groups, when they reach that level?

Say your higher kids are reading "The Big Fluffy Giant" book. You write detailed lesson plans for "The Big Fluffy Giant" book.

When your lower group reaches that level in March, you can't just reuse the guided reading plan for "The Big Fluffy Giant" book, for those kids?

Next year, your 1st graders will be so different, that none of them will be reading "The Big Fluffy Giant"?

In three years, all the kids will be so different and will have such different phonics needs (because phonics changes so much each year) that none of them will need to learn to read "The Big Fluffy Giant"?

You really need to do all this work?

[Anonymous]

And the colleagues at your school...and in your school district.... none of them are writing plans for "The Big Fluffy Giant" book, because their kids are so different from your kids, that none of them need to read "The Big Fluffy Giant" but hey have individualized, special needs that require a different book?

Tell me the title of your guided reading books for this week. I bet I can find guided reading plans online for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes it is a lot of hard work but I am baffled how you think it is a waste of time. My kids consistently make a huge amount of reading progress, year after year. I do this because it works.

My kids make huge amounts of reading progress as well, but I don't have to spend hours and house Sunday evening writing lesson plans.

I think some teachers make more work than they need to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Are you a teacher? This seems so strange to me that you think you can just print ready-made GR plans and go.

I write my own, and then reuse them. I use the same books over and over. I teach the same phonics over and over. I teach the same punctuation over and over. I teach the same fluency skills, over and over.

Honestly, in almost 20 years of teaching, the phonics of English language has remained entirely the same. Fluency hasn't changed; sight words haven't changed.

[Anonymous]

I am an elementary ESOL teacher and teach different grade levels pretty much every year. Also, I'm asked to support different content areas pretty much every year. The model in which I teach (plug in vs. pull out) can also change from year to year. So some years I might have access to technology like a Promethean board and some years everything has to be in hard copy. My students rarely have the same needs from year to year. Since we don't have a curriculum or resources provided, I've mapped out a general progression for my newcomers that I can follow from year to year but their needs can be so different. This year I pull out three newcomers in the same grade level. One can decode and write pretty well in English, but can't speak or comprehend. One can speak English fluently but has zero literacy skills. The third has some literacy skills in his native language but is in his silent period and won't practice anything having to do with speaking. Every lesson has to be differentiated for each student's needs. Then once I get into a groove a new student will arrive with completely different needs than the ones I'm already teaching.

Flexibility is really key and like the PP said, we're teaching students, not just curriculum. I work in classrooms with some teachers who send in all of their work to Copy Plus in August for the first two quarters and they're all smug about it. They have files on their computer organized by week so that they can just pull it up the week before and they're all set for the upcoming week because they don't change a thing from year to year. They don't reflect on what actually worked because they have a "this is what we're doing this year because this is what we have done every year" mentality. Is it easier for them? Sure. But they always have excuses for why students aren't grasping certain concepts and they don't question their own rigidity and one size fits all style as a contributing factor.