Let’s Make a Plan

One of my favorite websites is all about pencils.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Talk about straddling the borderlands between past and future! A website about pencils. I don’t even know what to compare it to, but it’s a regularly updated blog about pencils, notebooks, and the collision of the old and new.

I would say that lesson planning currently straddles the past and the future too. For many years, our Ultimate Teacher’s Plan Book has been a big hit with teachers. And it is still going strong. However, more recently, I’ve communicated with a number of teachers who do their planning entirely online.

Teachers often plan lessons alone, in the quiet hours of a weekend, or in brief chunks of after-school time. There are also teaching teams, where the work of lesson planning is coordinated among colleagues so that all lessons across the curriculum are complementary.

As educators in the real world, how do you complete your lesson planning today? Would you consider yourself a traditionalist, with pen and paper and books, or an explorer, working in an online, high-tech environment? And do you work alone or in groups? Curious minds want to know!