The most simple way for reflection for a lesson plan? Keep the same notebook as your students.
There’s a lot of reasons to take the same notes as your students. I promise, the amount of work is certainly worth the amount of time you’ll save in the long run. (This is a HUGE part of the All Star Planning Method!) It’s only a shred more work, and it’s totally worth it. You may not even need to do this each year. Trying this just once or twice may be all you need, but there certainly is an advantage to doing this each year.
Lesson Reflection and Pacing
Keeping the notes your students take will help you with your pacing. You will be able to figure out almost exactly how much content to deliver each day. I like to aim for one to two pages (without any math examples taking up space). It’s sometimes hard to judge how much should be taught in a single day and it will change depending on the age and subject you teach.
Easy Way to Help Absent Students
Keeping a notebook that students keep makes helping absent students easy. You know that whatever notes are taken are legible and accurate. You can take pictures of these notes and email them to students are post them on Google classroom.
Reflection for Lesson Plan
If you have the same notebook you require your students to have, you can use for reflection for lesson plan. You can write directly in your notes about how your lesson went. If things are good, write them down so you do those things again. If things don’t go well, you can write those things down and fix them. Then, next year when you edit your lessons, you know exactly HOW to fix them next year. This is my favorite way to detail my lesson reflection. Learn more here.
Watch Your Teaching Evolve
Last up, the reason you should have the same notebook as your students, is to see the evolution of your teaching. If you keep everything year by year, you can take a look back and see how you’ve evolved. This is especially true if you’re kind of mushy, like I am. It’s nice to literally see that all of this work we do as teachers really means something and helps us to grow.
