New Teachers: Lesson and Curriculum Planning
CURRICULUM-PLANNING TIPS AND STRATEGIES
Your First Year: Countdown to the Big Day! Making Planning Manageable: When it comes to planning for your first year as a teacher, do you need some assistance figuring out where to begin? Learn the answers to some general questions, as well as the locations of a few useful resources. (Teaching Channel, 2014) [citation needed]
Planning in reverse requires thinking one step ahead: It’s like getting ready for a vacation all over again: review these five steps to backwards-plan your lessons. (Edutopia, 2012)
Understanding by Design Overview: You should save this detailed synopsis of the book Understanding by Design to your bookmarks so that you can get a better understanding of how this method of course design works. (Vanderbilt University)
3 Strategies to Take Into Account When Planning for Students from Varied Backgrounds What School Instructors Do: When planning a lesson, it is important to give students opportunities to grow as individuals and to shine by focusing on the content, the process, and the product. If you want to learn more about differentiating instruction, the other posts in this series are excellent resources; you can also check out the page on Edutopia devoted to the topic of differentiated instruction. (Edutopia, 2014)
Creating a Learning Experience That Really Matters: Investigate these four ideas for bringing the qualities of deep learning into classrooms and the learning that takes place in schools. (Edutopia, 2015)
To First Instruct the Students: A variety of instructional methods, including lecture, discussion, hands-on learning, games, student presentations, technology integration, and free response writing, can be utilised in the classroom to cater to the needs of a wide range of students. (Edutopia, 2015)
CRAFTING UNIT AND LESSON PLANS
Putting Together an Educational Module That Will Be the Best One Ever: Place your attention on the more minute details as you make preparations for the upcoming school year. Ensure that you save a copy of the printable checklist that is associated with this post. (Edutopia, 2014)
9 Ways to Plan Lessons That Will Transform Your Students: Create transformative instruction by making a concerted effort to plan ahead, cultivate awareness in the present moment, and break free from traditional instructional methods. Included is a printable list of helpful hints for your convenience. (Edutopia, 2014)
ALIGNING INSTRUCTION TO STANDARDS
Standard Core Curriculum and Planning: Planning the Organization of an Instructional Unit: Learn several techniques that can assist you in exercising your creative side while you are planning lessons that are in line with the standards. (Edutopia, 2014)
Using TED.com as the foundation for a unit on lesson planning and the Common Core State Standards: Learn from the experience of one educator who planned a Common Core–aligned blended genre unit in which students researched and wrote their own persuasive speeches in the format of TED Talks. (Edutopia, 2011)
Understanding the Common Core State Standards: Resources for Those Interested Are you looking for resources that will assist you in understanding how to navigate the Common Core State Standards? Explore the educators’ guide to websites, organisations, articles, and other resources on Edutopia that look at this system of standards and how they are evaluated. (Edutopia, 2013)
FINDING OPEN RESOURCES
It’s Better to Be Free: An explanation of why you should make use of open educational resources (OER), as well as details on where you can locate such materials. Contains a link to a compilation in Google Sheets that was put together by the author and lists more than one hundred repositories of open educational resources (OER). (Edutopia, 2017)
Academic Activities to Soak Up Knowledge: Find some examples of activities that you can do to fill up the valuable time that you would otherwise waste. A hint: they ought to be entertaining in addition to instructional. (Edutopia, 2014)
IMPLEMENTING PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
How to Get Started With a Learning Approach Based on Projects: Do you plan on conducting a project-based learning (PBL) pilot this academic year? Explore the curated collection of online resources that Edutopia has compiled for understanding PBL and getting started with its implementation. (From Edutopia, revised in 2016)
Visit Edutopia’s Curriculum Planning and Lesson Plans pages for additional resources that can be used for lesson plan creation. Are you looking for additional resources that are geared toward new teachers? Check out the other curated guides that can be found on the Resources Toolkit for New Teachers page, as well as all of the content that can be found on the New Teachers page on Edutopia.