Question:
I'm finishing up my first phase of student teaching here in
California, and several of my professors require that I write
comprehensive, detailed lesson plans and thematic units. My question
is, in the real world of teaching, how detailed do your lesson plans
have to be? If I had to write a detailed lesson for every lesson I
taught I would quickly run out of time.
Answer:
I am presently in Grad School here in California, and have also been
required to write detailed lesson plans for classes. I am presently
working part time as a Substitute until I finish my student teaching
this Spring. I asked a couple of teacher-friends for some help with the
first lesson plan I ever wrote, and they all just said "I'm terrible at
that. . . I can't help you". One said that they were supposed to submit
lesson plans to the principle by the end of September, but most of them
hadn't gotten around to it. This is scary.
However, I suspect that it depends on the site where you work. I kind
of got it down to a science and haven't had that much trouble getting
them cranked out. I just completed three Thematic Units: one for ELD (5
activities - one for each day of the week - one four levels of English
Language production), one for Teaching of Reading (case studies
included) and one for Social Studies (an entire month's worth of
lessons). The thing is, WE NEED TO KNOW HOW TO DO THIS, and we should
be doing it. The thing that bothers me is, the people I asked, who
didn't know that much about lesson plans, are GOOD teachers with kids
who are successful and have good solid skills. The thing is, teachers
are under such intense scrutiny, I worry that they will make teachers
look bad.
I'm glad I had to learn to do this, but if the rest of the school isn't
going to turn in their lesson plans, I'm not going to spend time
cranking them out.
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