Homeschooling Planning Techniques
By Mimi Rothschild
Part of the home-school lesson plan is to ensure that what you teach will provide meaningful instruction to your students. By taking a step back and establishing what you are going to teach, you can decide in advance what is important, and how to teach it.
An excellent way to do this is to create an outline of the instructions you plan to provide for the following year. The outline should provide an overview of what you plan to teach, allowing you to make sure that you have all the required materials (such as appropriate lab materials for a science class). It does not need to be overly detailed, but should be detailed enough that you can use it to develop lesson plans from it (anywhere from a few words to a paragraph is best). For example, “science” is too broad, but a “three-week section on evergreens” would be about right.
Scope of the subject should also be considered. As the student gets older, the scope should become tighter and tighter. For example, you should go from a world history section, to a specific nation, then to a particular state, with sections on specific groups. The idea is to provide a general background on the subject, and then a tighter focus that allows the student a more exacting background in following sections. Consider how you would teach a child about American oak trees: You would need to provide in general botany, and then deciduous trees, and then oak trees, and finally American oak trees, with each lesson thus building upon the former lessons.
Also consider the sequence in which you will teach the students. In this case, look at what you want to teach during the year, and when you want to teach it. Remember, relevancy should guide your hand. For example, a section on growing things is best taught in the spring, when things begin growing for the year. Conversely, a section on baseball is probably best not taught in the winter, when baseball games will not be held.
By considering scope and sequence, you can create lesson plans that are age appropriate as well. Also, you help to ensure that you can prepare ahead of time any materials necessary to teach the class; and that they are available (especially valuable when the materials are seasonal, such as fall leaves or certain kinds of fish- it’s difficult to give a lesson on salmon when none are running!). Planning ahead will definitely make teaching easier!
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