Peek At My Week: Visual Lesson Plans

This week, I’m overcoming a teeny fear on my blog.  I’m linking up my visual lesson plans with DeeDee over at Mrs. Wills Kindergarten for the first time ever!  I have tried to link up my visual plans a few times over the past year.  Every time I get halfway through, I chicken out and delete the post!  I have no idea why, but the thought of putting my lesson plans online for other teachers to see and even (dramatic pause) download makes me a little self-conscious. In six years, my lesson plans have only been formally introduced to my teaching binder and, during the occasional evaluation, my principals. However, I think it’s time to get over my fear. 

Lesson plans: Meet the blogging world. 
Blogging world: Meet my lesson plans.

Before you shake hands with one another, please excuse my random abbreviations and made up acronyms in my plans. You know how it is – teachers just understand what they mean when they write their plans, since for the most part, we write the plans to ourselves. 🙂  I also did not upload my small group plans this week. (Baby steps!) I type out separate reading group plans each week.  I teach math solely in small groups. So, while each group learns the same standard, I differentiate the activity according to their level during the lesson.

If you have any questions about anything in my plans, I am happy to answer them for you!
The template of my day and schedule is horizontal.  So, this top picture is on the left side of my binder, and the bottom picture is on the right side. This way, I can see the entire week laid out on my desk in one, quick glance.

Download my plans in Google Docs by clicking HERE. You’ll be able to click on the cover pages of the products I’m using so that it will take you straight to the source.
They are all clickable within the PDF.  
My lesson plan template was inspired by Erica Bohrer.
The template is from Ms. M’s at A Teacher’s Plan blog. 

My “Math Mini’s” this week come from this great website I found called K-5 Math Teaching Resources. They have awesome activities that are perfect for small group, our math mini notebooks, and lesson plan introductions. My math mini is a 5-10 minute math activity at the end of our small group rounds. I reteach, review a concept, front-load an upcoming concept, work on performance based tasks, or give the kids a critical thinking problem to solve in which they discuss, write, and explain their answer in their math notebooks.

I can’t wait to start my States of Matter unit this week! It is one of my favorite units! On Friday, I told my kids that we would be making purple cows this week.  They, as always, asked what that was and I, of course, would not tell them.  That is half the fun – making them wonder all week and building up the “purple cow” suspense. I wish you could have seen their puzzled faces. Here’s a picture of our purple cows from last year. I promise I’ll take lots of pictures for you this week! 🙂 It’s such a FUN science unit!

I hope everyone has a great week! Thank you for letting me share my plans with you.  ðŸ™‚

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9 Comments

  1. Thanks for posting your visual plans! I loved seeing how you complete your math workshop. It is very helpful as I am trying to implement math workshop with my firsties. I was curious as to what your other groups are doing as you are teaching small groups. I was also very interested in seeing your science plans. I am also teaching in Ohio and love getting new ideas in my first year of teaching first grade. I am looking forward to seeing more of your visual plans in the future. 🙂 Thanks again for sharing!!

    1. Hi Lisa! 🙂 Thanks so much! 🙂 Here is a blog post I wrote awhile ago about my Math time. I hope it will help. 🙂 I find partner games on TpT and Pinterest and then I use my monthly Write On/Wipe Off Math Games that are available in my TpT store. There's a link to the January pack in my plans on the left side of the first page. 🙂 http://secondgradesugarandspice.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-glimpse-into-my-math-workshop-freebie.html Thank you again for visiting! 🙂

  2. I love your plans and I am also in the same boat with the visual plans. I just did my first set this weekend. I am still a little confused how to allow the hyperlinks I created in PP come through to google docs. I saved them as a pdf and uploaded them to google docs and also saved them as a png for my blog. Any tips? I would love for you to stop by and check out my plans too ; ) Thanks Lauren http://www.weeklyhive.blogspot.com/

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