I realized that a large part of my problem this week was that I didn't prepare fully enough. I need to know exactly what is happening each day in class and be ready for it and I wasn't. That is why I felt the way I did all week. It is absolutely worth it to spend time on the weekends prepping lesson plans for the coming week. I have time on Monday morning to physically prep everything, but I need to spend some time getting the lessons down on paper in some way so that I know what I'm doing. Worse thing ever is to not know what I'm doing.
Toward that end, I need a good system for keeping lesson plans. I was never really taught how to make lesson plans or a good way to keep them so I am organized. Over the summer I put together a Google doc with my lesson plans, but that doesn't seem to work really well. I need something, on paper, that I can quickly refer to during class (because I forget what the next thing is) and that I can make notes on and keep for the coming year. Yesterday I created a format in Slides that looks like it may work well. I put the two days of classes together, Monday & Tuesday and Wednesday & Thursday, since I do the same thing across two days. Then I have a few big boxes to fill information in, it looks like this:
That way I have my objective right at hand so I can put it on my board, I have a list of the things to do (sometimes in detail because, I forget) and then I have the prep things that need to be done (because again, I forget).
I created one for chemistry and one for biology. That way they are given their own instructions and I don't have to search for them and I have plenty of room to make notes on what happened in a particular class and for next year.
I think this is good and that it will work, but I've thought that before and was wrong. I don't know why I can't seem to get and keep a system that works for me. I have lots of good ideas but they don't last. So I'm not exactly sure what to do, but I will give this a good try and see what happens. I'm going to work this weekend to get next week ready, it's almost done, and then use it and see how I like it. What I need to do is keep an ongoing document for the year so that next year I can look back and just make the necessary changes. Okay, I've gotten pretty good at sitting at the end of the day and getting things ready for the next day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I will just add this to my task list and make any notes or changes that I need to. I should make it in red so that I know that was added later. Okay, I will give this a real shot and see how it works. Of course, it all hinges on prepping the coming week every weekend, but I think I can do that too.
Well, lucky me, we have a staff meeting today so I need to get moving.
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