Learning how to plan and deliver lessons aligned with the Texas TEKS standards can be difficult as a middle school teacher, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything you have to do every day in your job. However, spend some time planning your lessons and practicing the delivery. You can use lesson planning as a classroom management toolkit to become a better teacher. Here’s how!
You’ll Be More Organized
When I was assigned to teach in middle school, I knew that lesson planning would be essential. I decided to do well by getting organized. That worked out well until October. That’s when the semester fatigue began to set in. I found it hard to plan on my own. That’s when I discovered the LYS Classroom lesson planning app and their Texas TEKS-aligned lesson plans. No more guessing what the admin wants! Now, all of my lessons are planned with just the touch of a few buttons.
You’ll Be More Prepared
Lesson planning will make you feel more prepared. The work may seem daunting initially, but once you set up your workflow and assignments, you’ll be more organized and ready to tackle the day. Plus, feeling more prepared will give you confidence. You’ll be able to spend less time on lesson planning and more time doing actual teaching. Plus, lesson planning apps can help you stay on track with what standards your students need to meet with their assignments.
You’ll Be More Engaging
Lesson planning is often complex for teachers. Sometimes the lesson plans are a home run, and other times, they can be blah. It takes work to stay creative and relevant. That’s why having TEKS-aligned supplemental lessons helps. It makes lesson planning more accessible, and it helps keep students engaged in the lesson. Lesson plan apps like the one from LYS make finding and using lessons that align with your teaching standards even easier.
You’ll Be More Efficient
I want to share how lesson planning has changed my life as a middle school teacher. You may be thinking, how could this change my life? Well, I am here to tell you it can and will!
It is essential to have time management skills in any profession, but teaching is one of those jobs where we are given little to no time during the day. An allotted number of instructional minutes takes up a big chunk of our class time. This leaves little time for grading papers, reviewing student work, or research and collaboration.
As soon as I started using lesson plans from the LYS Classroom App and could plan all lessons ahead of time, I was immediately more efficient and effective in the classroom.
You’ll Be More Effective
Effective teaching is about helping the most students retain and create with each lesson. A lesson plan can be the key to knowing what your students want to learn. It is the map of your course and should include all aspects of the learning process, including teaching methods and activities, student engagement strategies, standards connections, assessment, and differentiation. Students are more likely to succeed when they know what they’re expected to do before entering the classroom.
In conclusion
The benefits of using lesson planning software are clear: it improves the quality of your lessons and saves you time. Lesson planning will change your life for the better, too. It’ll keep you from wasting precious teaching hours on administrative tasks that take away valuable instructional time. You’ll have more time to focus on what’s most important–helping students learn. If you’re like me, at this point in my career, I’ve realized just how significant an impact my lessons can have on student achievement. Now, I’m determined to make every single one count.
