Whether you’re a new teacher or a health practitioner looking to adapt to the new common core standards, exploring with a new daily lesson plan template is never a bad idea. It is important to structure a lesson plan that hits all standards and basic essentials of an effective day within the classroom.
21st Century Options for Lesson Planning
One of the benefits of living in this day and age is that there are myriads of different teacher resources available on line, including electronic lesson planners.
There are a few different websites, such as www.planbookedu.com and www.commoncurriculum.com, which offer free lesson planners. These, and many other, websites provide you with free software for organizing daily lesson plans. Some of the beneficial features include drop down standards, memory selection for any objectives you’ve previously typed in, and easy to use templates.
However, most of these easy-to-use downloadable planners are withholding the truly beneficial features. For example, some sites might offer a simple plan for $20 a year, and that is how you can access the common core drop down standards, share plans with fellow teachers, or utilize the most optimal templates.
Perhaps your district pays to provide all teachers with a uniform electronic planner, or maybe you don’t mind paying the extra for convenience—but for those of you who would like to keep it frugal, we have an effortless formula for creating your own daily lesson plan template.
How to Plan Your Own Daily Lesson Plan Template
Before jumping on a Word Office document, Google Documents, or any other document for that matter, you should contemplate a few things before starting the template:
- How will these lessons be organized? Will you print each lesson and attach them into a binder for every unit? Will you have one large binder for different courses? Or could you possibly keep a digital folder filled with lessons?The answers to these questions are important because they will dictate the aesthetic of your daily lesson plan template. If you will be printing frequently, then consider leaving the spaces big enough to handwrite your lessons in order to save ink. Or, perhaps you will store all of these lessons within folders by month or course to be stored on your hard drive. This would certainly save ink and allow you to cut and paste objectives, standards, and assessments.
- What are the necessities for your lessons? Does your district mandate a structure for lesson plans?
Before constructing your own template, you must identify the sections of your own daily lesson plans.
Most daily lesson plan templates will include the following sections:
- Subject
- Period
- Date
- Lesson Topic
- Unit
- Standard(s)
- Objective(s)
- Materials
- Instructional Strategy
- Assessments
- Reflection
How can I make a daily lesson plan template that works for the Common Core Standards?
You can very easily adapt this template to become more of a common core lesson plan template. It might be time consuming, but you can create a frugal shortcut to mimic the convenience of the drop down feature on many electronic planners.
Simply cut and paste all of your content area’s standards onto a document and save them. Now, you can easily copy and paste them into your free lesson plan template! If you have to implement the Common Core Standards, then all you must do is ensure that you are copying and pasting these standards into the template—it’s as simple as that.
Once you finalize all of these details, then you are ready to begin designing the template.
The Design of the Daily Lesson Plan Template
Unless you have some hidden Graphic Design skills in your arsenal, you might want to keep your daily lesson plan template simple.
Open up any application where you can handily create a table—we suggest using a Word document. Before inputting the table, type out some important information first. It is up to you as to what information you want at the top of the plan, but here is an idea:
- Your name
- Subject
- Period
- Date
- Lesson
- Unit
Once you format this information to your liking, you are ready to install the table.
Select “Create a Table” and choose two columns and six rows—do note that this number will vary depending on how many sections your lesson plans will have. Next, plug the remaining sections into the left column of the table. Designate a proportional space for each section by dragging the horizontal lines, and possibly the vertical line as well.
Here is a sample daily lesson plan template using the information above:
Revamping your routine is never a bad thing. Try this free daily lesson plan template—it is sure to make your lesson planning much more organized, and therefore, effective.
