Another brilliant idea crumbles

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Once I started to implement my brilliant idea from the previous post, I realized that it was not so brilliant at all. First, I ran into the problem of not knowing what my schedule will be and therefore not being able to set up specific days. So for example, I could not set up the first day of school, August 1, because I don't know what classes I will be having on that day.  So then I thought I'd set up the classes by days of teaching. So I know I have chemistry, so Day 1 of chemistry, Day 2 of chemistry, etc. But that was really working out well either. I tried a few more iterations but nothing seemed to work out well. Then I realized that I would have handouts and things and I would need a separate binder for those and quickly it started to become unwieldy. So I have abandoned that idea and am back to my original plan. 

So here's what I'm doing. I have my curriculum map laid out. I am then taking the essential questions and determining either how many days I need to do them, or how many I can do in one day. Some are really easy to answer, others will take some work. Once I know I am then breaking the unit down into days and laying out how the days will go. Some topics I know are difficult so I will have an activity and a worksheet. Others are not that hard and only one, either an activity or a worksheet, will suffice. Once I get every day laid out, I will go back and fill in the activities/worksheets/labs/etc. And yes, I can do this because I've taught this course for 9 years and I really have an idea of what I want to do.

All of this information is going on Chalk.com by day. Then I will print out the lesson plans along with all the resources and put them in a binder. Then on the day of the lesson, I will have the lesson plan and all the resources right there to use. I can prep the week before because everything for the following week will be there.

As I was typing the above, I was thinking about how I would organize them. If everything is in its own binder, I will be switching binders 2 or 3 times a day. So maybe I'll have every subject in its own binder and every week pull the next week's stuff into my main binder. That could work, it would just be a matter of discipline to do it every week. But if I make it a habit to go in on Fridays, I could make that part of the Friday routine.

Well, yesterday we went to a party so not much planning got done and today we are having a little get together here, so no much planning will get done, so this will just have to wait until tomorrow.

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