For teachers, the 6 weeks that stretch ahead of them over the summer holidays is the time they recharge their batteries ready for yet another busy school year to start in September.
It is also a great time to take stock of lessons past, which ones worked and which ones need perhaps a little more refining or expansion.
With time to think, explore resources and develop new ideas, spending some of your summer break lesson planning is ideal.
1. Consider the resources you have
Lesson planning involves not only time and creating new ideas but also looking at what resources you have to work with. With schools and colleges under pressure to save money and make cuts to balance the books, there is scant opportunity to simply buy a load of new resources.
How can you create your own? What do you already have that you can reuse in the coming year?
2. Consider the resources you need
That said, there are times when you need to invest in new teaching and learning resources for your classroom. But with budgetary constraints, you want to make sure that any resources you buy are reusable, versatile and flexible across a range of teaching applications and lessons.
As well as physical teaching aids, teaching and learning resources are the ‘basics’ of running a classroom throughout the year such as the glue sticks you will need, the paper, the pencils and more. By having an overview of the lessons you intend teaching, you will be able to order and manage stocks of teaching resources throughout the academic year.
3. Seek inspiration
Sometimes, we all need a little inspiration to kick start an idea. This can come from ourselves, by looking back over lesson plans and ideas from lessons that went well. Why did the lesson go well? What did the students enjoy about learning that day or session?
And of course, the web is awash with some great lesson planning ideas. It is amazing how a small change in how a lesson or topic is put across that will fire the imagination of students. But some of these ideas may not, in their current format, be ideal for your classroom or students.
But it is a seed of an idea, a great place to start and to build your lessons plans for the coming year into something amazing.
