Getting a Good Lesson Plan

In teaching our children, we have the freedom to teach courses of our choosing (for now) and make realistic goals, while still having the flexibility to make changes over the year.  The state does not care so much about the specifics of your lesson plans, just that you have made them.  So make them work for you.

Keep in mind:

1.  Just because you bought a course that comes with lesson plans, doesn't mean you have to follow it.

We have to keep lesson plans for each child's set of courses (if I have children taking the same course I write one plan and put all of their names on it).  I keep these lesson plans with my folders of samples and attendance, and other pertinent information, for each child, to provide my proof of homeschooling, should it ever be questioned.  My first year of homeschooling I bought a curriculum package that came with lesson plans for each course.  I made myself a binder for that child and labeled the binder with the different courses she was taking, then put the subsequent plans under each heading.  Once an assignment was completed, it was highlighted.  I had my attendance form in the front along with a school calendar that I made (and continue to make each year).  This was a great way to have a guide for keeping me on track, and making sure I finished school in nine months rather than twelve.  I learned early on that I could skip assignments that didn't seem necessary or  she already had mastered. 

2.  If you make your own lesson plans, keep them general.

It didn't take me long to see that weekly lesson plans were the way to go.  Things happen and life gets interrupted.  In the past, I have usually written lesson plans in the summer, on my own, mostly because I am too cheap to buy them.  I like to buy them when I can though, to save time.  In writing a lesson plan, I just go through the table of contents and divide it up, not always by quarter of the textbook, but by difficulty.  The first quarter is often repeated material, so I may get through more than a quarter of the material in the first quarter so I can spend more time in the winter working on a new concept, like long division.  BUT, when I write this up, I usually write page numbers rather than long sentences.  For one week I may write, "Ch. 4, lessons 2-4" or I can be more specific, depending on the subject.  Science, for instance, may have something like, "finish workbook pages for ch. 3, review and take chapter test, choose experiment for ch. 4 and begin work in experiment notebook".  This is much more simplified than "complete workbook pages 26-30, review and take ch. 3 test, gather items for making a biosphere, and, using the scientific method, being writing a hypothesis for the upcoming experiment".

Another thing about weekly lesson plans, is that you can leave Friday as a make up day.  There's nothing written specifically for Friday, just for the week in general.  Some homeschoolers don't do assignments on Fridays.  They use the day for outings or projects or library time.  Knowing that we can plan to finish by Thursday, but have Friday to get in unfinished work, leaves wiggle room. 

Another important factor in writing lesson plans is to look at the whole of all of their assignments.  I like to write my heavy materials first, like math and science.  Then, when I'm writing plans for something like religion or english, if I see that they have a heavy week of work in math or a particularly difficult project in science, I can go lighter on other subjects.  For many OLG'ers, Faith and Life are used for religion, but we also add the Baltimore Cathechism or St. Joseph's First Communion book, for instance.  On weeks when we are perhaps, memorizing the Ten Commandments for First Communion, I may lay off the regular religion book and do memory games for learning.  Taking all the courses into account, helps keep the workload manageable.

3.  Keep all of your lesson plans in one book.

This will help both of you see what their day looks like without having to pull out every subject's notebook.  You could even have them printed so you have only a certain time period on each page, like a four week period.  Also, even though I like mine typed, I leave plenty of space to scratch through and make changes or write extras, like a field trip or a related library book.

There are a number of ways to do lesson plans.  Connie, for instance, uses an online program, where once you have written the lesson plan, you can save it from year to year and use it with subsequent children.  You can also print out weekly plans for each child to mark off, and you can do extras like grading, field trips and attendance.  I used this a few years ago.  It was not expensive for the work it did for you. 

Remember, you are required to have lesson plans and attendance for each student.  Work samples are also a good idea.  At the end of each semester, I gather samples from each quarter for each subject and put them in this cumulative folder I make for the year.  With the political climate hosting a number of homeschool enemies, we have to be diligent about our record keeping.  Who's to say when someone will ask for this, and when they do, they might want to see your records for the last "so many" years.  You don't have to follow them strictly, but you have to be able to show that you are educating your children, and not just playing hookie!