Each state has laws in place to say what will be taught in each grade. Schools take this and develop a scope and sequence (you can’t teach 1st graders fractions). Teachers work together to develop lesson plans based on these state laws and district scope and sequences. At the school that I work at, the lesson plans are already developed for each core subject area, so the teachers for each of those subject areas meet weekly to discuss where they are at in the lesson plans (this way, all the teachers of the same grade and subject are doing their lessons at about the same time). The teacher who leads these discussions is typically in charge of making sure the lesson plans are written and made available to the other teachers. The other teachers must then adjust their lesson plans to meet other needs (for example, each math class goes to computer lab once a week, but not on the same day, so Smith’s class goes on Monday and Miller’s class on Tuesday, so on the days that they are not at computer lab, they do the 1st lesson for the week – get my drift?).

Another way to answer your question would be what goes in the lesson plan. For example, my school requires that we put the following items in our plan each day:

Focus – basically, the state objective in sentence form (students will describe the rock cycle)

Curriculum Code – both the number of the state objective we’re teaching (SCI 6.14) and the number from the state assessment for that state objective (Obj. 2)

Materials – what will be needed for the lesson (paper, pencil, textbook, map pencils, construction paper)

Sponge – an opening activity designed to grab the students’ attention or pique their interest, access their prior knowledge about the subject, or introduce some vocabulary (rock cycle vocabulary crossword puzzle)

Activities – the sequence of activities that will be done during class (students will read chapter 16 in textbook aloud, teacher will lecture on main points, students will complete guided reading worksheet, students will begin “Rock Cycle” diagram)

Teacher Evaluation – what the teacher will be taking a grade on, can be something that will be graded and on the students’ participation with the lesson (teacher observation of student participation, guided reading worksheet)

Homework – what the students will complete at home to reinforce the lesson (students will complete “Rock Cycle” diagram)

While I was a student going for my degree in education, the program I was in required that we filled out a form for every lesson plan we submitted. While doing my student teaching, it was suggested to keep using this plan every so often just to make sure that I was still hitting every point in a lesson plan.

The quick set up of this form was this:

– State your objectives. What are you trying teach in this lesson.

– Materials. Anything special needed for this lesson?

– Opener. This is very important and is often forgotten. Something to get student attention and that ties into the lesson. (Learning about trees today? Hold up a leaf and ask students what it is.)

– Lesson. Teach them what you want them to know. Use student interaction to keep their attention throughout.

– Closer. A quick review of what you taught. Highlight the key points.

– Review. This is a review for you. What went well or not so well? If you were going to teach the lesson again, what is something you would change to make the lesson smoother or enhance child learning.

Personally, I think all the lesson plan templates are crap. It’s not that I have a better template, but a lesson plan has to be organic, it has to come from you and your relation to the class. Many of my failed lessons are incredible lessons for different classes that I tried to superimpose on another. Certainly templates like they teach in college are good to start with, but not to stick with. experiment, don’t be afraid of a bad idea, and find the magic in forming a lesson plan that works for the kids.

As an prior TA I would take a poll of what the kids wanted to learn. We were able to maintain the students interests.

take the ones already written online other teachers share