How do you plan lessons?

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Up to this year I have never planned lessons. I made a checklist with all the subjects having blocks for days and then if we didn't have a lot of time I would cross a box off. I would fill in page numbers after the fact.

 

This year I would prefer to start writing out lessons ahead of time.

 

But...what do you do then if you have less time that day than you expected? Due to illness, an extra errand, etc.

 

Or, is there an in -between way that I'm not considering?

[coffeegal]

When I was doing Calvert, the lesson plans were done by Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, etc. Then the lessons were done by subject in a row.

 

Lesson 1

Math X, y z,

English X, Y, Z

History X, Y, Z.

 

Lesson 2

Math X, Y, Z

English X, Y, Z

Science X, Y, Z

Art X, Y, Z

 

Lesson 3

Math X, Y, Z

etc.

 

When we needed to end before the day was done, I just drew a line where we finished. The next day we'd start there, finish lesson X, and begin lesson Y. I think it's rather similar to the loop schedule. :001_smile:

[bluemongoose]

I use homeschool tracker plus. I schedule in all the lesson plans for the year during the summer. When the school year starts, each Sunday I print out a weekly checklist.

 

If something needs to move because we cancelled or shortened school that day, I just use the reschedule feature in HST+ to move everything to the next day/week.

 

This works very well for us, but it is some work to enter the lesson plans in each summer.

[GoVanGogh]

We school year-round, starting in January. I could not find a planner that I liked that worked for our schedule so finally made my own. I toyed around with several ideas and did a couple of test runs before settling on a planner.

 

I used this form from Donna Young:

http://donnayoung.org/f12/planner-f/kh/daily-blue.pdf

And tweaked to include all of our subjects. (Added things like Latin, poetry and nature studies.)

I also changed the () to little boxes so I can write out the time per subject. (Ex: 30 minutes for history, 45 minutes for math, etc)

 

** This was a big "light bulb moment" for me last year. I would plan my lessons thinking we could do all this work, then I would get stressed that we didn't finish half the stuff. I spend two weeks casually timing all of our school subjects. What I realized is that spelling takes way more than 15 minutes, 30 minutes isn't enough science for my son, we needed to spend more than 30 minutes on math, etc... Being brutally honest with myself about how much time each subject took totally changed our homeschooling! No wonder I was stressed - I would try to cram five hours of work into three hours. :tongue_smilie:

 

Beyond that --

I printed off the lesson plan form and keep them in a 3-ring binder. I plan individual days - Day 1, Day 2, etc. I don't plan specifically that this lesson will fall on Tuesday, May 29th. That way if something comes up, the lesson can just shift.

We do six terms a year and I plan for 26 days of school per term. (The additional school days are field trips and outside classes.)

Everything is written in pencil, so I can easily change things around as desired/needed. (Because nothing ever really goes as planned. :lol:)

[kandty]

See if you can follow . . . . not sure if I can explain what I have been doing. For each subject I have lesson plans written (or on the computer), but I just have them labeled as Day 1 do this, day 2 do this, etc. and I don't assign a date to it. On my calendar/lesson plans I have the subjects I want them to do for the day/week/month. I started doing this when we got really behind and I couldn't bring myself to erase and rewrite 2 months of plans. If something doesn't get completed for the day I will either add that subject to the next day or I will not worry about it and we will continue next time we do that subject. So far this plan is working. I am still tweaking a little since it is new to me.

[LillyMama]

See if you can follow . . . . not sure if I can explain what I have been doing. For each subject I have lesson plans written (or on the computer), but I just have them labeled as Day 1 do this, day 2 do this, etc. and I don't assign a date to it. On my calendar/lesson plans I have the subjects I want them to do for the day/week/month. I started doing this when we got really behind and I couldn't bring myself to erase and rewrite 2 months of plans. If something doesn't get completed for the day I will either add that subject to the next day or I will not worry about it and we will continue next time we do that subject. So far this plan is working. I am still tweaking a little since it is new to me.

 

:iagree:

 

I do a version of this, in HST+, mixed with what bluemongoose said.

 

Because I school year-round, I don't have a summer. This means that I can take a couple of weeks to do one week in TOG, for example. So I just make five lessons in HST+ for TOG for every week (read-aloud, narration, literature reading, map work and project) and apply them to my pre-built lesson plan schedule. If all of week 4 actually gets done in week 4, great, otherwise it gets bumped to the next week or removed.

 

Not having a summer also means I can't input everything at once, so I just do them over a few hours on the weekends. I can usually knock out 2-3 weeks at a time. And I'm getting faster. ;)

 

So I made a basic lesson plan schedule in HST+ and then over the weekends I plug things in for the next week or so. I print off a checklist daily, because my kids have asked for this, and we each have a manila file folder I clip the checklist into.

 

If there are many instructions (read this, ask this question, then read that, do this project) I may bookmark the teacher's manual or type it out and attach it into my file folder. Then I put all the supplies I'll need for the week in a basket by the coffee table- books, teaching manuals, etc- and pull them out as needed.

 

Not sure if that's what you were asking...

[oraetstudia]

Three ideas:

 

You could assign numbers to each lesson as some curricula like History Odyssey do. So instead of daily plans you would plan say 90 lessons for history and break that into approximately how many you want to do per week. If some are more and some less due to changes in plans you adjust as you go.

 

In a related vein, you could break lessons into chunks (chapters, etc) with a plan for how often they should be done per week -- leaving wiggle room-- and do a plan like that. Here is an example:

http://www.shirreware.com/Curricula/GradeFive.pdf

 

A third suggestion, would be to make plans by the week, as books like WWE do, but make sure never to completely fill day five, so that when life happens, day five on the schedule can work to ease the pressure of getting everything done earlier in the week.

[Carol in Cal.]

I did it the 'in between' way.

I planned it by week, and assessed weekly and monthly.

I set a loose goal of how many lessons we had to do to feel good about the week, usually on a 'do the next thing' basis. This was intentionally set kind of low.

For instance, Bible--4-5, writing--5, math--4, grammar--4, science--1, history--1. Etc.

 

Then I would loosely track what we did. And I counted field trips and project work as well. So, for instance, if we went to see Romeo and Juliet, and then talked about it, and then wrote about it for 3 days, that would count as 2-3 literature and 3 writing lessons. If we went to a science field trip that involved an experiment, some additional learning elsewhere in the science museum, and related discussions, that might count as 4 science lessons. (As it seriously should. That is a lot of material. I did not fudge.)

 

If we didn't get enough of something in, there was always Saturday.

 

About once a month I would look at and briefly document progress. So, I'd see what lesson in Saxon we were on, and what had been the lesson the prior month--how many did we do? Are things going well? I'd look at each subject area that way. If I thought that our progress was reasonable, I would call it good. If I didn't, I would step it up for a while, maybe do 6 math lessons per week, or add additional writing, or salt in some extra science DVD's in addition to the regular lessons. I also tried to coordinate things so that they would enhance each other. When DD was doing a big climate project with her robotics team, for instance, I switched to the Weather and Climate book in her Science Explorer set. That meant that the two enhanced each other, which was nice. When she wrote up the project reports for the team, that also incorporated some serious writing learning--clarity, thoroughness, proofreading, etc. So those were ways to make her learning particularly meaty.

 

I was a fairly rigorous homeschooler, but I never was all that worried about getting done by the end of the school year, particularly non-skill learning in the grammar and logic stages. I made sure that DD learned a reasonable amount of history, science, and foreign language, but really punched reading, writing, math, and religion hard. We continued math and some grammar and writing during the summers, on an easy-going basis. This made me able to be more relaxed during the school year, and also stopped the typical summer slide backwards, and also enabled me to feel great about sending her to summer camps for fun or for a theme, and also dropping, for instance, grammar for a particularly intense period of some project, like the time that she was designing and building her own country on a team of three, and negotiating trade and immigration agreements with other dignitaries, LOL!

[HeidiKC]

make sure never to completely fill day five, so that when life happens, day five on the schedule can work to ease the pressure of getting everything done earlier in the week.

 

I like this idea!

 

I make my schedule in the summer for the coming school year, and it is one for each week, with specifics for each day. I have a schedule I think I got from Abbeyej (?!). It's great. It lists the 5 days at the top, and I briefly put what I want for each day: Saxon - Lesson 42, etc. Then below the 5 days is a space for lots of description. So I will list each subject with more detail. For Saxon I will list the topic names of the lessons for that week.

 

Only problem with this darn approach (which I love otherwise), is when we get off-track due to snow-day (my other kids are in school), or just behind. Then it's a bit of a mess trying to deal with it. What I usually try to do is just get caught up over the weekend and the next week. Of course that's no fun. I think this year I'm going to schedule in more "open days" (I love the idea of leaving Friday short or open, but not sure we'll have the time) that we can use to make up missed days.

[HeidiKC]

like the time that she was designing and building her own country on a team of three, and negotiating trade and immigration agreements with other dignitaries, LOL!

 

I am very curious about this! Would you mind giving a bit more info? Sounds like something my kids would love!

[raceNzanesmom]

I currently use HOD. We work on a "day" until it's done, however long that takes. We try to do math and reading everyday. If I miss something that I know I really want to go back to (especially a project), I'll jot it on a sticky note and move the note until it's done.

 

For my oldest, when I did all the planning, I did like was discussed in the pp. I numbered days and checked each subject off as it was completed. So we might be working on day 27 of science and day 34 of history. Using the number system made it easier, and kept me from feeling like I failed at getting it all done. We also, occasionally, had catch up days. It worked well and he was always finished by the end of our school year.

[Carol in Cal.]

I am very curious about this! Would you mind giving a bit more info? Sounds like something my kids would love!

 

It was really cool, but it was a one day per week coop that I didn't run. The teacher taught about various forms of government, and trade issues, natural resources, manufacturing, and diplomacy, etc. and the kids would discuss them. The kids 'claimed' parts of a big map that they made, and decided how to populate and run their countries. Then they set up a United Nations and negotiated other things.

 

The teacher was pretty adept at rolling with the kids' decisions while still getting them to learn things. She had taught this unit study before (I think that she invented it). For instance, my daughter's team decided to populate their country with Hamtaros. So instead of being the citizens, they were sort of like the gods of the citizens of their country. This introduced an element of species-al purity and species-ism issues that turned the whole direction of the class on its head for a while. As I recall, one other country felt that Hamtaros were vermin, while another felt that tolerance, but not equality, was in order. These were all hotly debated issues for these intense 5th graders, and were all issues that had neither been anticipated nor experienced by the teacher in the past.

 

It was an awesome class for Dd and her friends.

[BugsMama]

Hopefully this makes sense- We plan for 40 weeks of school, with every other friday "off". So, Each quarter is 10 weeks.

I plan lessons for 9 weeks. The fridays "off" are used as "catch up days" when we need it, and the final week (week 10 of each quarter) is also there to be used as a catch up. The remaining 12 weeks are split up during the year.

For us, Having off time planned in helps me not get complacient because I know when I am getting a break, and the buffer from week 10 prevents us from not finishing the work for the quarter.

I have a list of lessons I want done by the end of the quarter, and I use this list to print off my weekly to-dos- If I have SOTW planned for tuesday, and we don't do it, that lesson gets moved to thursday *the next SOTW day* and then thursdays lesson gets bumped to the "free friday" and so on.

[boscopup]

I use homeschool tracker plus. I schedule in all the lesson plans for the year during the summer. When the school year starts, each Sunday I print out a weekly checklist.

 

If something needs to move because we cancelled or shortened school that day, I just use the reschedule feature in HST+ to move everything to the next day/week.

 

:iagree: This is exactly how I do it too. :)

 

I also front-load the week, so Monday-Wednesday are heavier than Thursday-Friday. Thursday is our library/grocery day, and then Friday gets used as catchup for anything we didn't finish. I did this because I'm usually gung ho at the beginning of the week, but then I'm dragging at the end - no matter how much we get done earlier in the week. So I figured I'd schedule most things when I'm gung ho, and then make the dragging days be lighter. :) In first grade, I found it incredibly easy to catchup if we missed a day unexpectedly - we'd fit it in that week. In 2nd grade, not quite as easy. For third, I'll have to build in catchup days, for sure, as I'm adding subjects (like Latin).

 

I like the idea of timing subjects to see how long they are really taking! I will definitely have to do that. I made a rough schedule for next year, as I'll be adding a K'er and adding subjects to my 3rd grader, and the 3rd grader was around 3.5 hours, K'er around 1.5 hours. I think some of those subject estimates are high though. For example, I put 30 minutes for grammar, but really, grammar probably will take about 15 minutes, if that.

[MissKNG]

Plan? This is how I plan...I have our materials in an upright caddy and pull out the books I want to use that day. I open them up and decide what I would like to cover that day and stick a bookmark in those pages. This method is for curriculum that isn't planned for me like Singapore Math. If I'm using something with a schedule, I look at the schedule and pull out the stuff that is needed for the lesson.

 

In a nutshell, I stopped planning in advance and just go day by day.

[lillehei]

I just wanted to say that I switched from HST+ to HSTOnline. I like it better that I can access it from any device. HST is a big learning curve but once you get it, it is worth it!

[wehave8]

Three ideas:

 

You could assign numbers to each lesson as some curricula like History Odyssey do. So instead of daily plans you would plan say 90 lessons for history and break that into approximately how many you want to do per week. If some are more and some less due to changes in plans you adjust as you go.

 

In a related vein, you could break lessons into chunks (chapters, etc) with a plan for how often they should be done per week -- leaving wiggle room-- and do a plan like that. Here is an example:

http://www.shirreware.com/Curricula/GradeFive.pdf

 

 

 

 

When I was doing Calvert, the lesson plans were done by Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, etc. Then the lessons were done by subject in a row.

 

Lesson 1

Math X, y z,

English X, Y, Z

History X, Y, Z.

 

Lesson 2

Math X, Y, Z

English X, Y, Z

Science X, Y, Z

Art X, Y, Z

 

Lesson 3

Math X, Y, Z

etc.

 

When we needed to end before the day was done, I just drew a line where we finished. The next day we'd start there, finish lesson X, and begin lesson Y. I think it's rather similar to the loop schedule. :001_smile:

I can't believe there are planning ideas I never tried! These look interesting to me. I am going to look at HST, also. Any advise as I try the basic download edition?

[...................]

Thanks for all these ideas. I'm going to look into HST online.

 

Also like the day numbers idea instead of Monday-Friday.