Preschool Lesson Plan Templates: Improving Efficiency and Saving Time
The preschool classroom is a fast-paced environment, designed to engage the short attention span of young children while providing a variety of activities intended to improve basic skills, such as those relating to socialization and problem-solving. As a result, a good lesson plan is crucial to ensure that class proceeds smoothly with as little downtime as possible.
Any lesson plan prepared for young children can be a time-consuming process as it is structured to detail an entire school day with the same students, rather than the class-by-class schedules that become the norm in middle and high school. Fortunately, technology has provided the means to simplify the process and save a considerable amount of time.
Preschool lesson plan templates are exemplar files or software program features that allow an educator to automate much of the lesson plan creation process while establishing a system of organization that allows for a measure of consistency.
Nevertheless, a template is only as good as the information included within. It’s important for teachers to grasp the fundamentals of effective lesson planning before utilizing a preschool lesson plan template.
Here are some recommended components of an effective lesson plan, as well as an explanation of how the right template can streamline the process and save invaluable time that an educator can spend on other important aspects of education, such as improved lesson activities to improve student growth. Below are some examples of preschool lesson plan templates:
Three Major Sections of a Lesson Plan Template
Pre-schoolers usually fall within the 2 to 5-year-old age range. There are several factors that can serve as influences when designing a lesson plan for preschool children, including, student interest, learning styles, and even target student demographics. Because of their age, emphasis is typically focused on the social, emotional, and physical development of preschool-age children when designing lessons.
There are three major sections that a teacher needs to prepare to make the best use of template technology: establishing content and goals, planning instructional time, and preparing suitable assessments.
Establishing Content and Goals
It is important to consult with the preschool curriculum map or department planning team to determine which content needs to be taught and in which order. Preschool is an ideal time to instill potentially life-changing skills, values, and abilities. Therefore, it is important to have a well-prepared plan to provide them the greatest chance for success as they progress through the educational system.
Once you know what content needs to be taught within a given time frame (lesson plans can constitute a single day, week, unit, or even month), it is time to begin.
One of the greatest methods for designing a successful lesson plan is to start with the end goal in mind. Determine which skills or abilities students need to demonstrate, then design the assessment before presenting instruction. This will allow the teacher to confirm what it is they want students to be able to accomplish. Teachers are then able to ensure that each lesson is designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and practices likely to lead to student success.
Naturally, these goals and learning targets should evolve around national or state standards, as those are the official skills that students will need to learn throughout their educational journey.
Decide which standards you will address, then use those to write a goal designed to accomplish the intended outcome. Once complete, you have a plan to follow and an assessment to evaluate students on their performance, which in turn is an evaluation of your abilities to provide adequate instruction.
Any well-designed lesson plan template will provide a section for this information, as it is a crucial component of the process. Labeling this information with consistency will allow you to locate lesson plans covering specific topics within a database, so down the line you can easily find it if you need to refer back to it or make modifications.
Instruction Time
The heart of the lesson plan, this section will detail every step of the instructional process throughout the day, guiding the reader from activity to activity and explaining what needs to be done and how to do it. Most preschool activities will transition within 10-20 minutes to accommodate shorter attention spans, which means that over the course of a school day, there will be quite a few tasks to accomplish.
Time management is a critical skill, so when designing instruction time and activities, make your best estimate as to how long each task will take and label it on your lesson plan. There is always the potential for any activity to go long or fall short, so prepare for this in advance. Have a series of additional activities or fillers ready as well as potential shortcuts you can employ to get back on schedule.
Every lesson plan should begin with a pre-assessment of what students are learning or will have achieved at the conclusion of the class. Standards should be measurable and form a base of comparison so that teachers can assess students' performance during a post-test to ensure that new concepts are understood before moving on, as well as practical in terms of time stipulations. This is critical to engage preschool childrens’ limited attention span.
When preparing your lessons, try to keep the details short, yet informative. Remember that others may need to review the lesson plan, from administration to substitute teachers, so your major goal is for anyone to be able to follow the lesson plan and provide the instruction.
It may be tempting to micromanage the entire process, creating lengthy descriptions that may even include exactly what to say to students and when. While this may be a great tool for in-depth review, it can be overwhelming for others and even for you, as it can be difficult to keep up with your place in the plan if you must wade through pages and pages of text.
Provide enough information for others to successfully complete the lesson, but in as brief and efficient manner as possible.
A well-designed template will provide prompts and headers to make it easier to include each lesson and projected completion time. Remember that lessons are not set in stone – a template makes it really easy to go back and make modifications, especially when reflecting after activities are completed.
Templates will also include a place for you to detail any resources or technology required to complete the lesson, which is critical because missing materials in a fast-paced preschool environment can be catastrophic. List all required resources, then ensure they are readily available for use, especially if a substitute will be taking over the lesson.
Assessments
The planning and instruction sections are complete, so that only leaves student evaluation. Keep in mind that there are two major forms of assessment: formative and summative.
Formative assessments are useful to perform during the lesson itself, as they are simple checks for comprehension along the way. That can range from holding up fingers to gauge how well students understand an idea to practice activities within the lesson itself. Make sure that you sprinkle these formative assessments throughout the instructional process as it is an effective way to make sure that students are following what you want them to understand.
Summative assessments are a more comprehensive evaluation of how well students have grasped the material. These often take the form of quizzes or tests completed after instruction and practice are completed. Typically longer than formative assessments, summative assessments are a great tool to collect data on the success of your lesson.
Both types of assessments serve as a measuring stick for your lesson design and instruction skills. Collect the data from these evaluations and reflect upon them to modify both current and future lessons to enhance student growth.
Organizing Instruction Time on the Lesson Plan Template
Preschool instructors implement a combination of work and play within classes, and the expected teaching style is buoyant and optimistic. In addition, the teacher employs various educating techniques such as posing questions, providing pictorial representations, elucidation, illustration, depiction, and sensory receptors. Children learn to recite poems through animated gestures and body language, work kinesthetically with physical materials, and perform other activities as they are gently exposed to the classroom environment and expectations.
The preschool lesson plan template design grants you the ability to organize information in a significantly reduced amount of time. As the instruction section is the largest portion of the template, here are some helpful tips to make the most of your template when designing this more complicated section.
Divide and Conquer
Topics should be divided into various sub-topics. Teachers should decide the scope of the topic for instruction in advance to adequately present the material and answer any questions that may arise. Also, ensure that new concepts build on a solid foundation of previous ideas. If the fundamentals are not firmly established in the students' minds, they are at risk of feeling left behind. Finally, educators should combine various sub-topics seamlessly into a class discussion. Students should grasp the inter-relatedness of the multiple themes of the topic. Remember, even though teaching the material is complex, keep the descriptions in your template short and to the point.
Student Engagement
Students will be more engaged in a topic if it appeals to their own culture, interests, or has a clear connection to real life. It can be helpful to design a small section for each instructional activity on your template, indicating ways to achieve this transfer of knowledge.
Young children in particular enjoy hands-on learning. Use projects, models, and prototypes to gain a more realistic understanding of the topic at hand. Turning these activities into team-building activities allows children to learn the material as well as to practice social skills. Visits to museums, planetariums, theme parks, gardens, and school picnics also motivate students to explore real-life examples of learned knowledge.
Transfer of knowledge from the classroom to the real world is a major end-goal for education, and not only will these events allow application of learned concepts, but they also allow preschoolers to bond with others while playing, boosting their social and behavioral growth.
Revisiting Concepts
A template makes it easy to assign a preliminary section (or even other appearances throughout the lesson plan) just for reviewing previously learned skills. Young minds benefit from repetition, and taking the time to review can also be a benefit for any students that may have struggled the first time through the material.
You can even include a section for remediation, providing a more open ended activity for the rest of the children while you focus on a smaller group session to help students who may be struggling to understand an aspect of a previous lesson.
Flexibility
Integrating technology such as multimedia, audio-visual cues, and the internet is not only the way of the future, but also indicative of the present. Incorporating virtual simulations, online learning, internet culture, and even games can be a great way to deepen experience-based learning and engage learner interest.
One of the greatest advantages of using a lesson plan template is flexibility. It is easy to add technological innovations to the plan later to improve the original design and create a more student-interest driven activity.
Also, with such a significant amount of short activities, it is often necessary to tweak the plan based on reflection. The template can make this a breeze, providing unlimited versatility.
The Bottom Line
A preschool lesson plan template is a fantastic tool to help teachers organize, prepare, and deliver fantastic lessons. It allows a teacher to categorize sections, automate aspects of the design process, and create a database of lesson plans for easy reference. However, as with any tool, its effectiveness is largely dependent on the user. Teachers can use time saved by this technology to improve their instruction and activities, evolving their lesson plans with the template’s flexibility to ensure optimum student growth.
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