How do you write your lessons?

Part of my job as an administrator of a homeschooling program is to talk to families about what really good homeschooling looks like. I often have parents ask me how to make a lesson work for their family and how I get it all done. The quick answer is that it's different every single time I sit down to plan. But there are definite strategies I try to use.

1) How much time will this take? 

It's important to be really realistic. I've over and underplanned so many times! You can get really hopeful and think something will only take 30 minutes and it ends up taking two hours. Or you have grand plans of a lesson being amazing and it's a total dud, taking up five minutes or less. Think through it start to finish and decide how much time you need to do it well, without overdoing it. Add twenty more minutes to your plan, no matter what. It'll give you time to get organized, go down a rabbit hole in the middle or for some extra free time afterwards. 

2) How much is it going to cost me?

We recently tackled a science curriculum that we were both very excited about! It was chock full of lots of experiments and hands-on opportunities to do real scientific investigations. Unfortunately, each of those experiments also had costly parts, chemicals and requirements to complete. While we were able to make some safe substitutes, I also had to eliminate several projects due to cost and time. When you need a tablespoon of ethanol and it only comes in a $20 gallon container that you have no other use for, that might rule out the experiment altogether. This happens sometimes with art and social studies projects too. If a project requires expensive, single-use equipment, I recommend you skip it altogether.

3) Are we going to like it?

This seems like common sense right? Yet, every family I know has tried to put something together that they felt like they had to do, knowing nobody would like it. If you hate mess and the kids don't like surprises, it's perfectly acceptable to read a book on volcanoes rather than make a baking soda and vinegar one. If at least one of you isn't interested, find a different way. Sometimes it's just the wrong fit and it's ok to let it go. 

4) Is it engaging?

Not everything needs to be ponies and rainbows and chocolate cake. But the luxury of homeschooling and the benefit to the kids is that we can try to make every lesson engaging in some way. We can incorporate a video into reading, an interactive simulation after the worksheet or a hands-on project instead of reading altogether. Using the project-based learning strategies in a traditional classroom, you can always ask the kids "How do you want to show me you understand this concept?" Often my son comes up with a more complex, more engaging and more challenging project than I ever could have imagined. 

Using these questions, I'm able to plan out our lessons. Some of our curriculum is from our charter school but often I either find or write my own. Whenever we use standard curriculum, I always go back to #4 and mix it up wherever possible. It's always more interesting for both of us if we can break out of the read and answer questions mode into something more challenging!

Standards-based lesson planning- just say no!

A friend of mine posted recently on Facebook that she was struggling with figuring out how to plan history lessons for her son because the standards were all over the place. She plans on returning him to a more traditional type setting in two years and is afraid that he'll have "holes". So she's been obsessing about what the standards say and how to check that box.

My advice? Dump the standards for lesson planning! I know, as a teacher and school administrator I should be cheering for standards. Standards serve a purpose of keeping schools and teachers on track, ensuring a fair and equal education for all students and bring up the overall level of achievement across school systems. They make it far easier in a mobile society for a kid to move from California to Virginia and then to Massachusetts, hopefully while still staying on track academically.

But as a homeschooler, standards are the last thing I look at when lesson planning, not the first. I'm a strong proponent of interest-based lesson planning. Each summer, we sit down as a family and ask "What do you want to learn this year?" We set goals based on interest with a few mom-required elements woven in as needed. I lesson plan from there, taking into account interest, age, access to materials and whether or not the interest is likely to be long lasting or fleeting.

Every month or two, I check in with the standards of the grade level we're working at in that subject. Are we on track or do I need to tweak an upcoming assignment? Is there a connection I can make in a twenty second conversation to check a box or do I need to dig up some resources and find some relevant materials to cover a topic? If I do need to do that, how can I fit it into the momentum and lessons we already have, rather than throw something random on top?

A simple example of this is the kid's ongoing love of Greek mythology. I can take a standard like this one from Common Core ELA ""CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution." and weave in a study of a particular character like Odysseus or Poseidon. It's a natural fit into something he already enjoys and doesn't require me to sidetrack our studies to check off a box. 

Math is also simple, as it very linear and allows you to simply keep progressing through the standards and making forward progress. However, I often see that families forget the important areas in measurement and geometry because they aren't in the same linear progression. I like to sandwich these topics around something we're already doing in science, or spend a few days before a holiday break doing hands on projects. 

As new science standards and history standards come out for our students, there will be more components to review and check. But by no means, should these standards become the base of your homeschool lesson planning! Standards-based lesson planning is the surefire way to burn yourself out and make your kids lose their love of homeschooling. Even if your intention is for your kids to return to a traditional school environment, don't lose track of why you started this adventure in the first place. No good teacher... or homeschooling parent... sat down with a list of standards and checkboxes and started coming up with worksheets to meet the needs of those checkboxes.

So to every one of my friends out there sitting down with a list of standards before you lesson plan, please- just say NO!