EP105 How to move out of the day-by-day lesson planning trap and think big picture (Rachel's coaching call)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Angela Watson
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2017
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this coaching call with a teacher named Rachel, I think you'll recognize a very common dilemma for teachers: spending exorbitant amounts of time doing lesson planning, and still feeling like you don't know what you're doing from day to day.
If you're caught in a trap of planning every night for the following day, forgetting to do certain things with students even though it's in the plan, and constantly running out of time before getting to finish the lesson...this episode can be a game changer!
Listen in as Rachel and I tackling all of these problems. Her lesson planning process is essentially done in three steps, and you'll hear me articulate each of those steps as we go through them, because I think it's a good model to follow.
Certainly it's not the only way to plan lessons, but I think many teachers have never heard another teacher explain exactly how she plans, and everyone's process is unique. It's fascinating to listen in on her process, which sounds great in theory, and try to figure out where the breakdown is happening.
I hope this helps you identify missteps in YOUR planning process so you can streamline a bit like Rachel!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to episode 105 of Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm your host Angela Watson and I'm here to speak life, encouragement, and truth |
| 0:09.6 | into the minds and hearts of educators and get you energized for the week ahead. |
| 0:14.0 | Today I'm going to be doing a coaching call with a teacher named Rachel and discuss |
| 0:18.4 | how to move out of the day-by-day lesson planning trap and really think big picture. |
| 0:24.5 | Visit truth for teachers.com to get links to recommended resources, highlights from the |
| 0:28.7 | show, and to share your thoughts in the comments. So the episode that you're about to hear is a |
| 0:34.8 | free coaching call that I conducted with a graduate of the 40-hour Teacher Work Week Club. |
| 0:39.5 | Her name is Rachel and she's beginning her sixth year in the classroom. |
| 0:44.0 | Currently she's teaching fifth grade. |
| 0:47.0 | Rachel and I talked about several different issues during the course of our call |
| 0:51.0 | but the one that I thought would be most helpful to share |
| 0:54.1 | here on the podcast is where we examine her lesson planning process. |
| 0:58.9 | And that's because Rachel's dilemma mirrors that of countless teachers that I've heard from all across the |
| 1:03.8 | country. They're spending exorbitant amounts of time doing lesson planning and |
| 1:08.0 | still feel like they don't know what they're doing from day to day. They're caught in this trap where even |
| 1:14.7 | though they have a curriculum map or a pacing guide or even if they've done some |
| 1:18.6 | collaborative planning with team members, they're still planning every night for the following day. |
| 1:25.1 | And like Rachel, they're taking the time to document lesson plans, but still feeling like |
| 1:29.4 | they're flying by the seat of their pants. |
| 1:31.5 | Or they're forgetting to do certain things with students, even though |
| 1:34.4 | it's in the plan. |
... |
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