1. I would highly suggest using Plan Book software. For every lesson, I attach the files and weblinks I am using. I also copy the files and links to the repository, which is a big old listing of all of my files and web links with detailed searchable descriptions. You could easily include your conceptual questions in one of the extra lesson plan fields or in an attached file. It will make you an organized beast without a lot of heartache.

2. Create a unit plan sheet/curriculum map for each chapter/unit. Even if you revise it on a daily basis, it is a lot easier to make slight “course corrections” then to have to create each lesson from scratch each night. Put another way, how can you possibly have time to go out with friends during the week when every night you have to plan tomorrow’s lesson?

3. Don’t do all the heavy lifting for your students. It’s good for students to occasionally figure out how to learn on their own when the lesson is confusing or isn’t spoon-fed to them. Because they won’t always have as great a teacher as you and will consequently flounder in college whenever that happens.

Best AP Calc teaching moment for me was when a late night family emergency caused me to forget that I hadn’t planned for a 90 minute block AP Calc class the next morning. Rather than freaking out, I told the students to spend the first twenty minutes of class reading and taking notes on today’s section of the chapter. While they did that and compared notes with their neighbors, I read the section and flagged a couple of the example problems and some of the practice problems. Twenty-five minutes later, I had the class get into a circle and rap about what they just read. It was a new experience for the students, but some gave it a try and I then walked through some examples, had a volunteer try a problem at the board and then had them try a few problems at their desks. Finally, I had them spend the rest of the 90 minute block doing the homework.

A lot of good discussions and understandings from the students from that class and subsequently I made a habit of “doing nothing” planning-wise for the class about once every two weeks: I wouldn’t suggest doing it more often than once a week, however, as their ability to “self-teach” is dependent on all of the teaching you’ve provided up to that point.

4. Put most of your planning time into the most difficult concepts, the ones students get wrong year after year. Not the ones that are the most fun for the students, but the ones that can knock a student into a failure spiral if they do poorly on it. For those concepts, you may end up spending two or three times your average planning time on a lesson, and that’s fine. If you spend roughly the same amount of time on each lesson, then you’re over-planning.

Greatly appreciate you’re asking the above question as the previous responses have all provided good food for thought!

Since I’m teaching the same preps as previous years, I tend to re-use materials that I created last year — whether it be SmartBoards or worksheets. But my lesson plan is usually codified in SmartBoard form.

When creating a SmartBoard, I try to think of my ideal outcome of the class (in terms of understanding), and I see if I can’t find a way to walk students through it aiming for real conceptual understanding — with some conceptual work, and some practice work (“check yo’self before you wreck yo’self!”). I try to go for various modes of teaching (some partner/group work, some individual practice work, some direct instruction) — but honestly this year I’ve gone in waves where I’m a “lecture” teacher and when we do more interactive stuffs. When creating the SmartBoard, I’m thinking through in my head what I’ll say, what questions I’ll ask, if I’ll have students talk in partners for this or that…

But this year, when I’m basically revising SmartBoards from last year or the year before, I don’t have that tight thought process, and I’m finding everything I do is generally weaker. It’s because I didn’t go through that intense thought process. I hate the idea that I have to create things from scratch for them to be really strong (and not just good), but right now it seems like that’s the way I’ll have to go when I need really crazy strong lessons.

Usually when I’m revising a lesson from the previous year, it can take anywhere from 30-60 minutes. But when I’m creating something new, it takes longer. (Like today, I planned a new calculus lesson for tomorrow, but that took me 120+ minutes.)

Because I don’t like being restricted (I get through what I get through in each class, with a general hope of where I’m going to be at the end of a unit), I plan each night based on what we covered in class that day. Thus, I don’t have a “unit plan sheet” with what I’m doing each day and the homework problems for each night, all set up — like a few other teachers at my school do.

I currently think I need a few things to organize myself… All materials (online and physical) organized by topic. I need a list of good conceptual problems/questions and good writing questions, organized by topic. I need good “essential understandings” for each topic. I need good hooks for reach topic. Once I have those, then I think creating new / fresh lessons/units won’t be so challenging. I’ll have all the resources — I just have to put them together in a way that makes sense for me and for my kids. And I can plan ahead, instead of one day at a time.

But yeah, there’s my haphazard process.

In the “activities section”, I start with a “do now” part – which can be a small quiz, or just an exercise based on the previous lesson that ties well into the current lesson.
Then there is a “development” section – honestly, I’ve stolen all of this from “Every Minute Counts”. In the development section I plan the progression of the lesson – usually based on exercises or investigations of increasing complexity with some direct instruction sprinkled in between/afterwards. I have recently taken to highlighting (in MsWord) the pieces of text/formulas I want to have written on the board, and this helps keep me organized during the lesson.

The finished plan is on paper – and mostly the lessons are on whiteboard. We do have interactive whiteboards in every class, but I’ve yet to discover the benefit for math teaching.

The amount of time this takes varies on if I include an investigation or not: if I do, then it could take about 60 minutes or so, much of it spent making the figures in geogebra and formatting the investigation. If I stick to book exercises, the whole plan is done under 20 minutes. If I make my own exercises, then let’s say 40 minutes.
Thing is, I have about 16 hours of teaching per week, which is not a lot but every lesson is unique (no two groups take the same course) so each requires its own plan. I do take work home, but not very much anymore, and mostly marking (mostly never-ending psychology essay marking) rather than planning.

I’m experimenting with a flipped classroom approach right now, and suddenly my planning is flipped as well: mostly I plan student homeworks (design homeworks on thatquiz, find good youtube vids), rather than lesson activities. In class, they work on exercises in the book or investigations or old exam exercises.

Tina recommended Planbookedu to me which I now am addicted to as I hope that it means that next year I won’t have to plan anything at all (ha).

What works best for me is to have 1 day a week when I stay very late at school (Thursday) and 1 night a week where I work late at home (Sunday). On Thursdays, I prep the materials I’ll need for the following week (homework, choose which problems to use,, xerox stuff, organize my room, etc). On Sundays, I do the actual thinking of how I’ll pull off that lesson which I vaguely sketched out. I do the problems which I plan to use in class, think about scaffolding, a good warm up to lead into it, a good exit quiz.

On Mon-Wed. during prep I do mostly fluff work…create the power point for tomorrow’s warm up, grade quizzes, etc. But the actual prep happens on Thursday afternoons at school (this usually takes 2+ hours) and most thinking happens Sunday evenings at home (around 3 hours). This helps me to NOT think to much about it on the remaining afternoons/evenings.

I crave organization and structure so all of my classes have a dropbox folder. Within that folder are folders for each chapter/topic and the folders are filled with all the materials I use. This makes materials easy to find during class and also makes things seriously easy when I teach the same prep more than one year.

I use planbookedu.com and blank days are filled with: “objective, do now, discuss HW, ____, journal, HW” because that is the structure that nearly every day follows. I write objectives after the lesson (backwards, I know). My new goal for this semester is for the do now to be a quiz (3 quick questions on a powerpoint) or MCAS practice (questions pulled from past state tests on a powerpoint). The blank space in the middle is filled with explorations, discussions, development of rules and practice from the book. Some days there is a lot of exploring and projects, other days have a lot of book work (but one student complains every time that happens so she’s good motivation to keep things fresh). I love having 90 minute blocks since I have the opportunity to be multi-modal every class, but also because I can have a long stretch of uninterrupted planning time.