How do you effectively make lesson plans?

[Hunter's Moon]

This year, my mother and I will be making lesson plans for History (U.S. II) and American Literature. Also, Native American Studies, but that is a second semester course so not too worried about it now.

 

How do you effectively make lesson plans?

 

For example, I will do one section each day, and including all sections, chapter tests and unit tests, and worksheets there are 173 lessons in my U.S. II textbook. I wanted to make it at least 200 so it would be easier to divide into 40 weeks. What would you add as a lesson plan?

 

Would you add a one-day project, or a project that may take a couple days and call those lessons? Or would you assign readings? I am a big "living" documents reader. I just think it is cool to read exactly what they said.

 

I also love the History Channel, so would watching a History Channel special be considered a lesson plan, or just an extension of something I already learned. (I have been watching America: The Story of Us, but I have only seen the pre-Civil war ones, so could I watch the post-Civil war ones and call it a lesson?)

 

Any input is appreciated? Maybe an example lesson plan? (Of course, not the whole thing, just a sample)

 

What methods do you use in planning? Are you a "loose" planner, and if so, how does it all work for you? I like everything all laid out and pretty, so maybe the loose thing wouldn't work for me.

[Gooblink]

I love your enthusiasm and hope my boys are as excited about their studies in high school. :)

 

How about incorporating additional writing assignments - history essays or current event essays based on what you're learning in history?

 

Field trips are fun, too.

 

Best wishes!

Edited May 25, 2010 by Gooblink
correct typo

[Nan in Mass]

I'm loose because every time I have tried otherwise, it hasn't worked. I divide up the pages by my days (minus a few weeks for slippage) and then try to do that many pages every week. I make out a list of weeks with the target page number next to is, sometimes. That helps me know if we are behind or ahead. If it is a textbook organized as lessons, I figure out how hard we have to push to finish the book and just recalculate occasionally as the year goes by. Meanwhile, I make a list of extra projects or things to learn or read and squeeze the list into the cracks as we go along. I have tried making nice lesson plans nesting the spine and projects together, but inevitably, as we go along, the list changes drastically, making all my efforts a waste of time. For us, the trick to the loose method is to come up with a daily (or weekly) routine and a time slot. During the time slot, we do the routine. It might look like:

Mon. -Read first half of chapter

Tues. -Read second half

Wed. -Make flashcards

Thurs. -Answer questions and look at flashcards (finish at night)

Fri. -Correct questions and do some something extra if time

Weekend -Finsih something extra

 

Sometimes the routine revolves around finishing a book. Then the plan reads:

Read daily until finished

Discuss

Put on timeline and map

Write a paper or do a project

 

I am bad at predicting how long things like reading, discussing, and writing a paper will take, so we just keep working on a book until we are done, then start the next book.

 

HTH

-Nan

[Susan C.]

I'm with Nan, don't do lesson plans for the whole year. Something always changes, and then the whole year is off (and it stresses you out). I usually do lesson plans week by week, having an idea about how much we need to do.

[2cents]

What I've found that works well and offers flexibility is this:

I break up the core curriculum or text into sections for the time frame you are dealing with. For example, a text with 16 chapters might get 1 or 2 weeks for coverage depending on when I want it finished by. Then I start researching and bookmarking sites that I know will be good for the chapters. This is ongoing throughout the study period. At the beginning of each week when I am getting the schedule out, I gather all the resources I've found for that chapter along with the videos, additional reading and all assignments and distribute them evenly for the week or weeks. Having the resources and assignment ideas handy but not actually assigned until the week schedule is worked out gives us flexibility if something comes up and we need to extend or rearrange our time frame. So I do a rough overall plan for the year or whatever time frame I'm working with but do the details just prior to the work week. Hope this helps!

Edited May 26, 2010 by 2cents

[Nan in Mass]

Growl, if I could tell you only one thing about homeschooling high school, it would be that it is a balance between discipline and serendipity. You have to have the discipline to keep doing it every day; to keep going forward, rather than bunny trailing too much, so you cover everything colleges expect you to have covered when you enter their classes; to keep challenging yourself; to actually learn the material well enough that you can produce it rather than just expose yourself to it so that you recognize it when you see it (a good guideline is whether you can explain it a week later to someone); and practise is so that you can do it fairly fast and easily (otherwise you won't survive the pace and workload of college). AND you have to take advantage of the flexibility that homeschooling offers, otherwise you might as well do a correspondance course. You have to take the time to read that interesting National Geographic article that just showed up in the mail this month and happens to relate to what you are studying this week. You have to go on the field trips. You have to have time to do the projects that occur to you and investigate some of those intriguing (intrigueing? sorry - my spelling is rotten) new ideas. You have to have the time to mull over the difficult problems, not just put a question mark next to them and move on feeling confident that you are doing fine because you got a 95. This all comes down to lesson planning, as you no doubt are discovering (judging by your intelligent questions here). If you plan every lesson tightly for the whole year ahead of time, you won't have time to do anything with your lovely new knowledge except what the writer of your curriculum has planned for you to do; you wón't have time to read that seredipidous National Geographic article or go see that exhibit on Mesopotamian art that just happened serendipidously to show up while you were reading Gilgamesh. You will be too busy trying to complete the comprehension questions in your curriculum or writing that essay on a predetermined topic. And yet, if you do too much serendipity, you don't learn the material properly (ask me how I know about that SIGH - do as I say, not as I do). It is a balance. 2cents has done a lovely job of explaining how to balance the two. The lack of people posting in your thread and saying you-just-do-this should be a clue, too, to how difficult it is to find that balance. If your education doesn't ever have to meet up with someone else's expectations, you can serendipity your way happily through, continuing to teach yourself for the rest of your life, like many of the unschoolers. If you don't particularly value academic learning, you can rush through someone else's curriculum and check off the boxes and be done and move on to the more important parts of life. But if you are aiming high for colleges, you need to hit this balance just right.

-Nan

[In The Great White North]

:iagree: The balance is definitely hard to achieve. I also break it down (like Twocents). I only plan down to the week, not the day, which allows us more flexibility for that Mesopotamian exhibit or swim meets. I also do not assume that we will work on Fridays.

 

Adding on just to get to 200 lessons so you have a round number is not necessarily a good idea. Spring fever hits around March, by which time you won't want to have 50-75 lessons left.

 

For high school. especially the AP classes, I looked for detailed syllabi on the Internet. There were many that with weekly assignments, showing me which chapters took two or three weeks and which could be bunched together. Some chapters are more difficult than other and need more time, even if they have the same number of pages.

 

Planning by the week, instead of the day, is really more of a detailed schedule than a lesson plan, per se, but I've found that is all the detail we need.