This growing collection of posts will teach you how to lesson plan quickly, how to create an effective lesson planning system, important factors to consider when planning your lessons, and strategies for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly lesson planning.

It’s simply not possible to truly affect change without being consistent. Consistency is just as important when it comes to planning. If you want to lessen your stress, improve the effectiveness of your lessons, and help your students meet standards and goals, consistent planning is a must.

There is a better way to lesson planning. A way that streamlines the process, saves you time, while also boosting rigor. I’m talking about planning backward. This idea might be new to you. If it is, I ask you to keep an open mind, continue reading, and trust me.

One of the best pieces of advice I could give to any teacher is to establish (and stick to) daily classroom routines at the very beginning of the year. Not only will creating routines help you manage all there is to accomplish in the classroom every day, but it also provides much needed structure for your students. Consistent routines are one of the best strategies for avoiding behavior management issues as well. Let me share with you a few tips on how classroom routines benefit you, the best places to have routines, and advice for sticking to them.

Spontaneity can be fun when you’re planning a last minute trip or deciding what to have for dinner. However, it’s not a recipe for success when we’re talking about lesson planning. Planning without having a system in place leads to so much time wasted searching for activities and resources that might fit with what your students need to learn.

There is a better way.

To make lesson planning less time-consuming, less stressful, and infinitely more effective, you need a system. It starts with saying no to planning “Pinterest-style.”

Over the past several years, I’ve talked to hundreds of teachers about lesson planning. We all have to do it and yet so many of us never quite find a way to make the process streamlined or easy. With something so foundational to our work as teachers, establishing a successful routine for lesson planning is paramount to simplifying our jobs as a whole.

The act of lesson planning will never go away - it’s something you’ll always have to do as a teacher. So why not incorporate a few changes now that will streamline the process and save you hours of time later? With these three tips, you can easily cut your planning time in half.

Lesson planning doesn’t need to be a chore. Establishing routines and using a planning approach can go a long way to simplifying your lesson planning process. Here are four simple steps that streamlined my lesson planning process and saved me hours of time.

Now more than ever, our students are in desperate need of lessons about character. Students need a better understanding of themselves as people, how to respect others who are different, how to advocate for oneself and others, and simply what it means to be a positive member of a community. To help you get started, here are five of my go-to sites for quality character education materials on social justice, social emotional learning, education equity, and more.