Early years lesson plan template

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Show more details. Wish List. This early childhood lesson plan template is perfect for creating activities for children from infancy to preschool. Early childhood lesson plans are a required component of the Child Development Associate license CDA , this early childhood lesson plan template includes all the required components.

PreK - 12 th , Higher Education. Early Childhood Lesson Plan Template. Back to School , Classroom Management. PreK - K. Classroom Forms , Printables , Professional Documents. Daily lesson plan for Early Childhood Special Education activity template.

Daily lesson plan activity template designed for special education early childhood special education for either infant and toddler or preschooler programs. Is written to help ensure activity is meaningful and contains an activity-based approach to early intervention. Each component is clearly def. This is a lesson plan template for K Includes both a blank template and a sample lesson plan for Early Childhood Physical Education classes.

Activities , Games , Lesson Plans Individual. This is the lesson plan template that I use. It is based off of my schedule but is easy to customize. I put in the Illinois Early Learning Standards, but they can be customized. Sheet two has space for d. Lesson Plans Individual , Professional Documents. This Week-long lesson plan template for infants to Prekindergarten is designed for planning around centers, using a template that incorporates the domains from the Florida Early Learning Standards.

Activities , Classroom Forms , Professional Documents. Weekly lesson plan template for early childhood classrooms. PreK - 1 st. Create and organize plans for early childhood programs, preschool, preschool special education, prekindergarten and KInd.

Early Intervention , Special Education. PreK - K , Staff. Preschool Lesson Planning Templates-Editable. Use these preschool lesson planning templates to save time creating your early childhood education lesson plans! This download includes an assorted variety of editable lesson planning templates, and materials organizers perfect for Child Care Providers, Preschool Teachers, or Homeschooling parents w. I never throw away a lesson plan, even if it was a terrible lesson.

I've had many terrible lessons, but I never throw them away because part of my reflection piece to a lesson plan may say don't ever do this lesson again unless you think of this, or only do this if you have these children or these characteristics of children in your classroom. Some things just don't work with a particular group. That helped me reflect on my own practices and what I needed to do in the future. Now let's look at the actual process of lesson planning.

There are a couple of pre-things to think about. One is the format. In your program, there may be a certain lesson plan format that you use and you have no other choice. You may be able to create your own or adapt other people's lesson plans to fit your needs.

One of the handouts that you have for this course is a lesson plan template. You can adapt it if you'd like as it's very basic. It is actually a little bit more basic than what I use with our own preschool here, but I wanted it to be more generic for anybody to be able to adapt it to fit their needs.

There are plenty of lesson plans that you can find online and in different books or curriculum programs. It's important to find something that fits your needs and that fits your program.

The basic elements that you'll find in all lesson plans are the objectives, the materials that you need to carry out the lesson, the introduction, the actual activity, and then how the children would be assessed on their mastery of the different objectives. Figure one shows a basic lesson plan template.

It includes your name, the date that you think you're teaching the lesson, a name for the activity, and what learning domain is the focus of the activity. There's a spot for objectives, materials, location, lesson introduction, main activity, closure, transition, questions, how you individualize the lesson, the assessment piece, and then reflection or self-evaluation.

We will discuss each of these pieces in a moment. This could be adapted to fit so many different needs. For example, maybe you always know where a particular lesson is going to happen so location may not be important for you. This is just a starting point. It's very basic. I hope that if this doesn't work for you, you find a way to tweak it and make it work or find a way to supplement a form that you are already using, to help you plan those activities for young children.

One of the first things that we have to do when we are getting started writing any lesson is to think about what the big goals are. These are not the specific objectives for the lesson, but my overall purpose.

What is my big goal for this activity? Is it to have fun? Is it to target a particular skill? Your goals are going to come from different places. Your goals may come from a sheet of themes handed to you by your director. When I first started in my career, my big-picture goals came from the list of themes by month given to me by my director. Those were the starting point for my lesson, so those were my overarching goals.

I knew I needed to target friendships in November and I knew I needed to target spring and new birth in March. I knew what my goals were because they were handed to me and I carried them out. You may not have your goals handed to you. You may have to search and figure out what your specific goals are for a particular classroom or for a particular program. I also like to look at goals in terms of this is a short-term goal that I know is going to be successful at the moment, such as, the kids are going to learn something right then.

It might be a long-term goal where it's an ongoing process such as a lesson that we do over and over again or it's modified as the children become more skilled that they would be able to be successful toward the end of a time period.

Something that comes to mind is children being able to write their names. Our children sign-in in the preschool. In the beginning, sometimes it's just holding the pencil and making a couple of marks, but by the end of the semester, they usually can write their name.

Sometimes they're writing their first name and their last name because they already could write their first name. Those goals get tweaked a little bit over time, but I know that the first day we do that sign in, it's not a short-term goal. I know that they're not going to be able to do it perfect that first time and it's going to be different for each child. My first step is always to ask, "What's my purpose?

Does it fit my theme? Is it something that I think the kids will just really enjoy that day? That's a good starting point. The other starting point that takes me a little bit of time to figure out what direction I'm heading when I start planning is figuring out what's coming first for me, either my objectives or my activity.

Sometimes when you're going through teacher blogs online and you find an activity and think, "Oh, I really want to do this with my group of kids. Sometimes you start with the objectives. For example, your children need help with fine motor practice. Then you're going to find an activity that's going to help you with that fine motor practice.

It can go both ways. I go back and forth when I'm planning. Sometimes I'm planning and I start with my objectives for the activity and sometimes I start with the activity. That's something that I help my students with. I may give them a situation and say, "You need to plan something that targets this particular standard, or you need to plan something that is an art activity that uses glue.

This is a good point to start at too when you are doing some preliminary planning, trying to figure out exactly what it is that you need to accomplish in whatever time frame you have with your children.

Another pre-planning activity that I like to do is to figure out what domains are going to be addressed in the lesson. Some of you may not think of things as domains, you may think of them as curricular areas or subjects, but think about what's being addressed by this particular activity?

We use the term learning domains. We look at the aesthetic domain when we think about arts and music, the affective domain when we think about emotions, cognitive for math and science, and language and physical and social. What is ideal for us is when we have lessons that target more than one domain at the same time. For example, a lesson may target language and social at the same time or math in the cognitive area and it's also a music activity, so it fits within the aesthetic.

It's nice when you can target more than one domain when planning an activity. It's also helpful to make sure that your lessons can target a variety of skills that fit within a variety of domains. There are so many options out there on what to address in a particular lesson. If you can have a focus that brings in a lot of elements without being overwhelming, children are going to attach to what's most important to them.

It might be the physical aspect of something or maybe they're more in tune with the aspect of how beautiful a painting is rather than what it felt like when they ran their hands through the paint. Kids may focus on different aspects, so if a lesson goes in many different directions, it gives your kids more options of what is appealing to them and what targets their needs and their preferences.

I also encourage people to look at the domains that you typically target and make sure that you're targeting those seldom-used domains. I find that I gravitate toward a lot of math activities. Math is not my strong point, but for some reason, I tend to do a lot of math activities with young kids. I might not do as many physical or social activities. When I look through lesson plans and activities that I've done and I realize I haven't done a lot that targets the social domain, that's a tip to me that I need to focus on that domain a little bit more.

We have our favorite types of activities to do and we have our strong points for ourselves but we need to make sure that we get out of our comfort zone so that we provide a really well-rounded experience for young children. These are preliminary things to think about before you're actually into the actual lesson plan format.

From this point on, we're going to actually look at the lesson plan format and talk about what goes in those different sections of that template. The activity name seems like it would be a very simple thing to do. I tell my students, "Think of a name that's descriptive. Think of a name that when you see it, it gives you a picture of what you think that activity is going to be. In my class this morning, I showed my students an activity that I had given a really silly name that didn't address what the activity focus was.

I used it as a point of don't do this. Figure 3 shows some kids that are building outside with blocks. A name for an activity like this might be outdoor block-building or stacking. Having a good name for the lesson will help you in however you maintain or organize your plans over time.

It will make it easier when you need to find that lesson again to either revise it to fit in another domain or with a different theme or use it again. If you have a really good descriptive name, it'll be easier for you to work with it later on. It's also helpful for other people if they're looking at your plans to get an idea of what the children are doing in the activity. Your name can help set the tone of your activity. The objectives section of the lesson plan is a hearty part of lesson planning.

Your objectives are what you want the children to achieve. These are the outcomes that you hope the children will be able to do at the end of a lesson. Your objectives should be targeting the domain, so if I am targeting math in the cognitive area and I have some objectives that are dealing with addition or counting, that certainly fits the domain focus.

But if my domain focus is art and my objectives are more related to math, that doesn't fit really well. It's important to make sure that objectives reflect what the focus of your plan is. Objectives should be able to be addressed or seen throughout your lesson. They might be seen a little bit in the introduction and certainly in the questioning or the main activity. I caution people when they are writing lesson plans to be realistic with the number of objectives that can be targeted in a particular lesson.

Sometimes for those of us that use a certain set of standards for our lessons, it's easy to flip through the standards and find 15 objectives that you think your lesson's going to address. However, in a minute lesson with three-year-olds, you may not get to those 15 objectives. I tell my students to be realistic and have no more than three objectives. The number you choose is up to you, but three is reasonable. Less than three is fine too. I tell my students they don't have to have three, they can have just one objective that is the main focus of your activity and is what the children are going to be able to do at the end of this activity.

It's realistic to have a small number so that you're certain that you are addressing it and you're certain those children are able to actually accomplish what you're setting out for them to accomplish without you getting disappointed and the children being overwhelmed.

You may be writing your own objectives based on what you know young children should be able to do at certain ages or the skills that they should be able to do within a particular grade or setting, or you may have specific required objectives or standards that you're following.

If you are writing your own objectives, a simple way to think about writing them is to think about what's happening, the conditions, that will help this child be able to do a behavior, which is the action that they're able to do at the end of the lesson. I always think of conditions and behaviors. For example, if I say, "After playing shape bingo, there's the condition the child will be able to identify four basic shapes.

The objectives should always be reflective of the children's relationship with that activity. Objectives show what the children should be able to do so that when you are assessing to determine if kids could actually do what you said they were going to do, you should clearly be able to identify that. You should be able to see it, hear it, ask a question and find out if the kids could do that.

You may be writing specific objectives, where you're saying, "Given this activity or given these situations, kids will be able to do this. This standard is communication and literacy and is for three-year-old children. The standard is for them to be able to recognize letters in their name. It doesn't give you the conditions, it just gives you the behavior portion. The main activity that we write helps set the stage for how children will be able to recognize letters in their name.

That is a simple way to write your objectives. Even if you're not using a particular set of standards or a particular curriculum, there are plenty of them out there that you can find that may fit your needs as you write objectives.

This can keep you from having to reinvent the wheel and trying to guess what children of certain ages should be able to do. If you don't have specific standards or objectives or a curriculum that you're following, it might be helpful to look and see what your state has set for the age group that you're working with, or look at some different curriculums that target the type of program that you're working in. Even if you're not using that particular curriculum in its entirety, it gives you a starting point for what would be some good practices for working with young children.

Sometimes I know what my objectives are, such as I know that children are going to need to recognize letters in their name, so I'm going to design an activity that supports that. It may be that I know that my children are always going to be signing in and they're going to be recognizing letters in their name, so they're going to be addressing that standard.

This is where it's hard to determine if the activity comes before the objectives or the objectives come before the activity. When you are writing lesson plans, sometimes you don't start and write them in the order of the boxes that are on the template. Sometimes you jump around depending on your thought process as you're going through that actual planning process.

Another aspect of lesson planning is to determine what you need and where you want to carry out the lesson. I tell my students this is a shopping list. You should have a complete list of materials in your lesson plan. First, it helps you remember all the items you need, such as three different colors of paint, paper, aprons, and something to cover the tables with. It should be very detailed. I often see people write in their materials section, "Book.

It needs to be detailed. Be very detailed. Gathering the materials is easier if you have it listed in your lesson plan and it helps when you check to make sure that you have everything that you need. It's also easier when you have that list of materials to practice to see if the materials actually work the way you think they're going to work. Many times, I've tried to do an art activity and it didn't work out as I thought.

For example, one time the type of paper that I chose didn't really work well with the medium that I was trying to put on the paper because the paint was too thick or too slick. I encourage my students to practice with the materials, whether it's to use the art materials or to read the book that you say that you're going to read to make sure you know how to pronounce all the words and make sure it's the version you think it is. I also think it's important for you to get in your head when you're listing your materials.

If I lost my voice and my administrator had to carry out my lesson, could it be done based on the materials listed in my lesson plan? Could somebody go pick out all the materials that I need for this lesson? It gets to be a habit to do this and it saves so much more time to have everything listed out. They can likewise help you with various other activities such as picking which material requires to be covered and in which the class that material needs to be covered.

Their help can likewise be a significant possession to you. I can not worry sufficient just how valuable lesson plans are to our lives as instructors. It is very easy to come to be also involved in helping the trainees discover. Although you might feel that you are doing a terrific job at what you are doing, there is always room for improvement.

The majority of the time, we are so concerned with teaching the particular trainee what they need to understand that we lose out on the many other facets of life that we need to be giving attention to. I feel that lesson plans are really important for teachers because it offers us a area to begin and develop the curriculum around a particular principle. If you want to compose lesson plans, begin today.