What Schools Do

Lesson Plan

Comment: I found this and thought it interesting because most people don't know that lesson plans are a real part of early childhood. Years ago I had a big book of plans and stuck to it religiously. As the time passed, I realized that lesson plans are circular and that there are days and there are days. Often lesson plans are headed in some particular direction. With children four and older, this is really important to achieve goals.

With three year olds, it's a catch as catch can. This year in our preschool class, we have been working on the alphabet, counting and listening to directions. Then the interest of the children changed and they discovered all the toys on the "I can do this all by myself" shelf, and a serious hiatus has put the alphabet on hold. It's kind of ridiculous to drag a child away from serious building discovery to something he doesn't want to do. So when the toys have been explored, we will gently go back to the letters and numbers.

This schedule in the article is a great plan for beginning teachers and teachers who need to explore very young children. Very young children, however, will pretty much explore on their own once they figure out how!

Lesson Plans

It’s not a comprehensive form, more of a guide to keep yourself on track or to alert parents or administrators to your plans. I always like to post something like this on my wall so that all interested parties would have an idea of what we were doing in class that week and it was helpful to keep me on track as well.

The curriculum enhancement space is for those of you who may have “extras” that go on, like when your kids leave class for Spanish, Dance or Computers. On days when the children aren’t going anywhere outside the classroom, I usually would focus on sign language to teach and reinforce the letter and color of the week.

You can fill it out something like this: