Teacher Poll

katiewhompus

Question for the teachers:

Do you write your own lesson plans, or use lesson plans give by your department head/past teachers? By use past ones I mean, word for word follow an outline and don't ever come up with your own stuff.

I was teaching the past couple of days (eek, scary, fun) and the teachers were astonished that I wrote my own lesson plan and didn't just use the one my boss used last year. I get not re-inventing the wheel, but do all teachers just use everyone else's stuff?

jamiefour

I have been teaching for 9 years and I still write all my lesson plans.  Granted, they aren't as detailed as I did when I first started but you have to adapt each lesson the the students you currently have.  I reuse ideas from the past but I never use an actual lesson plan from the past without adapting it.

saxy414

I use something called "Game Plan" in my younger grades, and it has all kinds of songs and activities, as well as methods for teaching and assessment. Most of what I do is from there, but I have been changing a lot of things around in there because the teacher before me did not do a lot of what I'm doing, so the things it says my third graders should know, they might not.  I also add ideas I've gotten other places in with the Game Plan stuff.

For my bigger kids, I do my own stuff mostly.  If I can borrow a powerpoint or an idea from another teacher, I will, but I make my own lessons from them. 

katiewhompus

You guys give me hope for the future...our teachers...not so much.

katiewhompus

Yeah, my co-worker (who wants to be a teacher but can't get a job because she sucks) constantly whines about how all of the lesson plans she finds online are 60 minutes but the classes are 90 minutes so what should she do with the other 30 minutes?

Um...excuse me? I may have said that it would save our school district money if every teacher just read off a script like she was planning to do. Then you could just have someone with a high school degree do it and give them minimum wage.

sucrets4

Being that my lessons are specific to the music I'm teaching, I have to write them all.

In NY we didn't really have to write any, though, just copy our plan book, which kicked ASS.  In AR I had to write them based on the district format which didn't fit with how I structure a rehearsal, so I wrote it weird to make it look good on their form.  No one read them, anyway, except the 1 time a year I was observed.

kaesha

I've done both. I've worked at schools where the department shares resources and we all work together to come up with culminating tasks and activities, but the place I teach at now, I'm pretty much on my own (with the exception of one rich culminating task a year). To be honest, I don't actively write lesson plans up anymore. I have a book I carry around with me that I write down what I need to cover, but how I do that is pretty much up to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with using other people's stuff if they want to share (frankly, I wish I was still back at my school that shared resources), but I can't imagine being expected to follow a daily lesson plan verbatim. That would drive me crazy!

MaggieandJake

I write my own lesson plans-but I'll reuse ones from past year and tweak them as needed.  However, when I worked in a district with specific math curriculum (everyday math) I had to follow a specific scope and sequence as well as timeline for getting through lessons, and used the teacher manual as a guide.  I'll sometimes look online to get ideas and see how other teacher are teaching a specific topic or content and then work it into my own lesson plan.

Each class/teacher/school has their own learning/teaching style, so I find it hard to believe that anyone would find it easy/convenient or effective to copy someone else's lesson plans.

kaesha

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_snarky-brides_teacher-poll?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:17Discussion:4b5b7faf-de7a-4ac5-9e98-7287838a11b5Post:5a7a28be-7c84-4173-b1dd-71511ff6839e">Re: Teacher Poll</a>:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: Teacher Poll : See, that I understand, or following guildines set by the state or whatever. Our teachers are just using the same plan. So say Teacher A develops a lesson plan for Earth Science in 1998. Teacher B uses it, then Teacher C, and now we're down to Teacher G, all using the exact same lesson plan developed by Teacher A. To the point where you could look at the plans the current teacher has and they follow word for word Teacher A. The teachers think this is completely normal (but they also think making $60k a year is minimum wage so yeah)
Posted by katiewhompus[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that would drive me crazy! I'm in Ontario, and I can't think of any school that I've been at that's like that. It's your classroom, and unless the board says you have to follow someone else's plans, I say teach the curriculum the way you want to teach it.