How do you plan?

First, don't forget to enter our giveaway.  It's easy and benefits a good cause!

We are linking up with Jessica over at Mrs. Stanford's Class for her Linky Party "How do You Plan?"  Seriously, head over there now and link up and enter.  You could win a $25 dollar gift towards an Erin Condren product.  I am a total geek for planners, calendars, and just anything in general that you can use to organize!

We are implementing the RISE evaluation here in Indiana.  This past year our principal worked with us to get our plans ready for this new evaluation.  We have to have more detailed plans that site the standards, evaluations we plan to do, reteaching, objectives, etc.  I made my layout on pages and change it week to week.  Almost everything changes within the lesson plan except for a few things like spelling tests, comprehension quizzes on the basal reader, and dictation sentences.   I won't lie and say I don't spend at least a couple of hours (or more) planning each week.  That doesn't include making copies, getting manipulatives ready, changing out stations, looking at assessments, and graphing assessment results.  (If there was a shower at school and I could hide my dogs during the day, I would sell my house and move into my classroom :).)  Here is my first grade lesson plan for the week we did "Whistle With Willie", it's probably one of my least filled in lesson plans of last year...:

 We have to specify the type of evaluation we plan to do.  Is it a formal assessment, a project, teacher observation, student work, or class participation?  I have a 1-5 code for each one of those and it goes in the box in the lower right hand corner of the second page.   After I have completed a lesson I take a few seconds while the kids are working to record any informal assessments.  I found this useful because sometimes you just can't remember who it was that REALLY seemed to get a lesson and who REALLY stared at you with doe eyes and had no idea what was going on.  I feel with math especially it changes from skill to skill as to who gets it and who doesn't.  Sometimes your lowest students overall will just click with a certain topic and your highest students overall just can't wrap their head around something.   I keep track of my informal assessments with this form:

It looks really time consuming but it isn't.  It only takes a few seconds to record it and I can usually get it filled out during transition time while the kids are putting their math in their cubbies. 
 
This next planning form is a reteaching form.  I use this to plan my reteaching for each week.  I just couldn't fit all of the details that I wanted to in my lesson plan.  On my lesson plan form I might say Reteach #1.  This basically means go check out #1 on my reteach page.  I figure out what needs retaught and who needs that help by doing assessments and graphing results.  All of our assessments have 5 questions and are uniform so the results are consistent.  You don't have 3 multiple choice/2 fill in the blank on one test and 5 multiple choice on another.  You can't get consistent results unless the assessments are uniform.  I have four spots for reteaching on my form... I may use one of them or all four of them.  It depends on my students and what is going on that week.  I may have all 4 filled up with just one student who is struggling in each one.   I may have just one reteach that week.     

This is just the way that I do my lesson plans.  Some people like their days to run across the page and other from top to bottom.  Some like to pack everything into one page...other multiple pages.  As long as the vital information and planning is there, it doesn't matter the format you do it in!

Endless Possibilities,
Stephany