Lesson Plans

Lesson Plans help you organize what you want to teach and when.  You can specify the activities that will comprise each lesson, as well as create assignments specifically tied to the material covered in that lesson.

Lesson plans are organized by course and term.  You can create a lesson plan for a single day, a week, or any number of days you find convenient.  Within each lesson plan, you can define activities (also called instructional plans) and assignments, each of which can be scheduled individually at a different date (and time, in the case of instructional plans).  Both instructional plans and assignments will appear in the Calendar module so that you can easily budget your time.

Adding a Lesson Plan

To create a new plan, select the subject by clicking on the appropriate course name in the course tabs.  Then click on the Add button in the term header (for example, the Spring term).  An entry form will appear.  Enter the lesson plan name and click Save.

Once you have created the lesson plan, a detail view will appear beside it.  To enter the lesson plan information, click anywhere in the Overview section of the detail view.  Enter the lesson plan beginning and ending dates (for example, the week of January 7, 2013).  If you wish, you can also tag the lesson plan with skills that are reinforced or assessed by the lesson plan''s activities; simply click on the Skills field and select the desired skills (to remove a skill, click on the X icon by the skill name).  For more information about defining skills for each course, see the Skills module.  Finally, you can enter an optional description for the lesson plan.  When you''re finished entering the data, click Save.

Filtering Lesson Plans By Date

When you have created a large number of lesson plans, you may find it useful to work with a limited set of plans that fall within a range of dates.  In the example below, you''ll notice that the teacher has created 11 plans, only the first four of which have been dated (HomeSchool Minder displays undated lesson plans in italics to distinguish them from dated plans).

To concentrate on the first few lesson plans, a teacher can uncheck the “All Dates” checkbox, which will reveal the “from” and “to” filters.  Clicking in either the “from” or “to” field will display a calendar where you can select a particular date.  Lesson plans with a beginning date outside the “from” and “to” dates will not be displayed.  Additionally, undated lesson plans will be excluded any time that either the “from” or “to” date is specified.  In the example below, the teacher has elected to display only lesson plans with beginning dates of January 1, 2013 and later:

To view all lesson plans regardless of their date, either clear the “from” and “to” fields or click on the “All Dates” checkbox.

Adding Activities

To add activities (“instructional plans”) to the lesson plan, click on the Add button in the Instructional Plans header in the right half of the screen.  A modal entry form will appear.  As you can see in the example below, besides entering the name and description of the activity, you can schedule its beginning and ending date and time to within half an hour.  When you have finished entering the details of the activity, click Save to go back to the lesson plans page.

Adding an Activity with a Lesson Plan Resource

Certain activities could require the use of special teaching tools, such as audio recordings, atlases, web pages, etc.  You can easily associate an existing resource with an activity by simply selecting one from the “Lesson plan resource” drop-down menu.

Note that, initially, no resources will exist for the course, and so you will not be able immediately to select one.  However, creating resources is very easy: just click on the “Manage Resources” button, and a new view will appear that will allow you to create, modify, or delete resources for the current course.

Managing resources is similar to working with records in other pages in HomeSchool Minder.  To add a resource, click on the add button in the Resources header and enter the resource name.  You can edit a resource by clicking on the row for the resource, and delete it by placing your cursor on the round drop-down icon in the row for the resource and clicking on the Delete option.  When you have finished creating resources, click Close to go back to the activity entry form.

Once you''ve selected a resource, you can add a note (in the “Resource details” text area) indicating how the resource will be used for the activity, or any other information pertaining to the resource and activity.

Once you have defined resources for a course, those resources will be available to attach to any activity for any lesson plan associated with that course (regardless of term, year, or student).  Note, however, that the “Resource details” you enter for one activity are specific to that activity.  If you add the same resource to another activity, you will be able to enter a different comment reflecting how the resource will be used for that activity.

Adding Lesson Plan Assignments

Adding assignments to a lesson plan is very similar to adding activities.  The assignment entry form is, moreover, almost identical to the one used to add assignments in the Gradebook and Calendar modules.

To add an assignment to the lesson plan, click on the Add button in the Assignments header.  A modal entry form will appear, where you will be able to enter the assignment name and description.  You will also be able to enter the assignment date, assignment category, points possible, and grade scale.  Note that the grade scale by default is the one you selected when you enrolled the student for this course, but you can change it for individual assignments.

Assignments added to a lesson plan are no different from assignments created in the Gradebook and Calendar modules, except that they are associated with the lesson plan.  They will be listed along all other assignments for the course in the Gradebook module.  When the assignment is graded and a score is assigned to it, this information will be reflected also in the lesson plan details.

Lesson Plan Reports

In the Reports module, you can view the Detailed Lesson Plan report, which shows all lesson plans together with their associated activities and assignments.

Other useful reports are the Daily and Monthly Activities reports, which list a student''s activities (including instructional plans and assignments) for a given day or month.

All of these reports can be downloaded in PDF form for printing or sharing with other teachers.

Lesson Plans Docs