Format For Daily Lesson Plans: Fill & Download for Free

If you were an administrator who came into my room and said, “Mr. Kaplan, you need to follow this lesson planning format from now on!” I would say, “Yessir! Right away sir!” The moment you turned around, I’d drop it in the trash and move on teaching the way I already do.Over the course of teaching high school for 20 years, I have been asked to submit lesson plans maybe twice aside from when I’m being observed. I’ve been observed about five times. The last time I was observed, I wasn’t even asked to submit a lesson plan. Where I work, having a lesson plan isn’t the best idea. Having a really formalized lesson plan is an even poorer idea. Having a series of lesson plans that reach out more than a few days is a recipe for disaster.The school where I work isn’t the kind of place where you can depend upon much. As I once pointed out in Daniel Kaplan's answer to As a teacher, what are your worst moments in the classroom? I once had the power go out in my room for several days. In the winter. In a room where the windows face into a corridor on the bottom floor of a two-story building. We were supposed to work on something involving laptops that day. That shouldn’t be a problem, right? Unfortunately, no power meant no internet. My solution?If I had a lesson plan written out, I’d have had to write it off as a loss.My school has more than its share of fire alarms and lockdowns that completely throw off any plans we might have that day. The lockdown we had today (a BB gun in the cart of a guy walking past the campus) was after school, so it didn’t ruin my plans for the day. We’ve even had, I kid you not, “emergency rallies.” How can a pep rally be an “emergency?”So let’s move past that. Let’s pretend that I taught at a school that… had a bell system that was installed this century (as opposed to 1965) and could be depended upon to work. Now what?Unless all of my plans are going to be single-period lessons, I don’t see how a formalized lesson plan would work, and even then it would be problematic. My teaching style doesn’t work well with a daily lesson plan. I teach in long-term units. I just finished a two-month unit on writing. It just doesn’t work to do it in the form of daily lessons, which is kind of what most common lesson plan formats seem to want.I had a student teacher earlier this semester. We essentially had to fake how to write up his lessons. What he had was very similar to the five-step plan I learned in my credentialing courses. The same plan format my master teacher told me to throw away. My lesson planning now is basically done on my whiteboard. I was testing today, but Monday, it was, “Writing context for nonfiction.” That tells me everything I need to know.I’m also not here to write lessons for other teachers. We’re supposed to be intellectuals. Freethinkers. All that jazz.I’ve had other teachers walk into my room and sit for a few minutes. Nothing strange about that. They tell me that my class is great … but that isn’t how they teach. That’s cool. They don’t teach the way I do it, either. I don’t want to be lockstepped. I don’t want to have a common lesson plan format.

I home schooled my four sons through high school. Yes, we had a schedule. They woke up at various times; the youngest was often dragged from his lower bunk bed around 8am by an older brother (youngest was not an early riser). Lessons started at 9am. What I mean by started was that they were seated with daily lesson plan already reviewed and book opened. Before that they got up, dressed, did pet care (always had a household of pets), ate breakfast, did dishes, made beds…. Routine was important. This gave the boys and myself a good hour to prep for school. No rushing. Schooling lasted from 9am to 2pm. Some days included outings. I wasn’t draconian in my scheduling. Winters could delay start time as shoveling needed to be done. Spring time (after a really long and bitterly cold winter) would find us outside doing lessons or breaking for a hike. But, getting dressed, eating breakfast and morning rituals were followed. Mind set. I get dressed up for church. It sets the day apart from the rest as a special day. The boys get dressed for school because it sets their minds that we are in learning mode.

Yes.Mine are both flexible and vague on purpose.In college, we were taught to do page-long, 7-point detailed lessons for each class period we taught. I got very good at doing those, then never used them once I became a teacher.Over the years, I went from detailed daily plans to vague weekly ideas of what to teach. It works well for me.For example, my lesson book this week just says:Week 12 - Sixth Grade - Finish adjectives unit, writing prompt, vocab.That’s it. My whole plan for the week. But I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what to do for each of these, and I have more than enough resources at my fingertips to fill the class time and teach the concept.I usually write in what I actually did in the class AFTER I taught it, so I remember where I am for the next day.