Log Your Lesson Plan

Lesson planning is a crucial component of teaching. In fact, if you think about how many lesson plans are floating around in the world, the number is pretty staggering. Considering that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are almost a million high school teachers and 1.5 million kindergarten and elementary school teachers, lesson plans truly do comprise a huge body of human knowledge.

It would be a shame, then, to let all the learning that happens as you are teaching go to waste. Think about how much you discover in the course of a lesson’s opening moments to the time students turn in a paper, project or reflection journal. Why let all of that knowledge pass by, when you could record it for future use?

To Teach Is to Learn

“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”  ~ Phil Collins

Thinking ahead has always been a must for teachers. Considering the average class size in 2011-2012 was 21.2 for public elementary schools and 26.8 for public secondary schools, teachers need to keep track of every little trick that helps them manage classrooms and teach material.

No one needs to tell you that throughout the course of a single day in the classroom, you gain untold amounts of new knowledge. Some of that knowledge may be subject matter, but much of it regards the lesson structure itself. You may, for instance, get new ideas on how to open a unit or lesson, or stumble upon a connection between two subjects and want to make sure you bring it up next time. Or perhaps you discover an insightful new visual that helps students understand a math concept.

Whatever the case, keeping notes on hand can help substantially in future years. Whether you want to make sure you remember how a particular lesson relates to a standard or simply loved how students’ eyes lit up when they experienced a certain phrase, those are valuable records to have.

The answer? To log them. Logging your lesson plans has a ton of benefits both for you and your students, including:

• Helping you to build your curriculum over the school year and from year to year
• Collating resources so you always have them handy when you need them
• Keeping ideas on file so you can return to the later in the unit for discussion or incorporation into subsequent lessons
• Cataloguing student ideas during group time or Socratic discussion so you can reflect on them later
• Making you a better teacher

Not quite sure what this might look like? Let’s peruse the specifics below.

Logging Lessons the Smart Way

Lesson plan logs are actually quite simple. After each class, write a brief reflection on what you taught and how it went. Include notes about what worked or didn’t work, with ideas for improvement. You should also write down specific page numbers you covered in a textbook so you can reference them later, or come back to them when a later lesson links up to this material.

It’s a good idea to keep your lesson plans collected together, making sure to write notes on them about the success of various activities and whether you modified the lesson during class. If you, upon reflection, decide that your lesson plans are missing a crucial component, you can even update your template so that all future lesson plans reflect this addition and all past lesson plans now account for it as well.

“To create an economy built to last, we need to provide every student with a complete and competitive education that will enable them to succeed in a global economy based on knowledge and innovation.”  ~ The White House

This quote points out a crucial component of education: It must be the best possible to give students the chance they need to succeed in the global economy and help America remain competitive. It may seem silly, but you can help simply by logging your lessons to ensure they’re the best they can be.

Systematizing Your Lesson Log

Of course, logging will become much easier to do if you put a system in place that helps you get the job done quickly. Nothing ensures success like systemization, so find a process or tool that helps you reflect on each lesson you gave at the end of the day.

One such tool? Planbook Plus. It makes the daily task of lesson planning for teachers easy and intuitive, and gives you an automatic place to record your thoughts about each idea you covered and each task children completed that day. It was designed by educators to help them plan classroom activities, seamlessly create or import lessons and map activities to curriculum and standards, so you can trust its legitimacy. Plus, once you create your plans, they’ll be available online whenever and wherever you need them.

Now you can teach your lessons, log your notes and ideas for next time, and file them away until you need them again. Your curriculum and teaching style will benefit, as will the kids who count on you for their future success and happiness. It’s a win-win … win.