Ever felt like you're constantly racing against the clock, trying to squeeze in lesson planning amidst a sea of other tasks? Well, brace yourself for a revelation that will revolutionize your approach on how to lesson planning quickly, and gently shift you from the stressful day-by-day or week-by-week planning to a more efficient, long-term strategy. Join me, as I guide you through the art of batching – a productivity hack that condenses similar tasks, saving you hours of refocusing time, and enabling you to plan weeks or even months in advance. Tune in as I share my personal experiences, practical examples, and insightful tips about implementing batching in your lesson planning and other aspects of your school day.
Ever felt like you're constantly racing against the clock, trying to squeeze in lesson planning amidst a sea of other tasks? Well, brace yourself for a revelation that will revolutionize your approach on how to lesson planning quickly, and gently shift you from the stressful day-by-day or week-by-week planning to a more efficient, long-term strategy. Join me, as I guide you through the art of batching – a productivity hack that condenses similar tasks, saving you hours of refocusing time, and enabling you to plan weeks or even months in advance. Tune in as I share my personal experiences, practical examples, and insightful tips about implementing batching in your lesson planning and other aspects of your school day.
So you've been driving home working all night on lesson planning and here's looking for a way to get everything done during the school day. You feel like, no matter what you do, you barely plan one full week ahead and then you're worrying about the upcoming next week before you know it, or you're planning one day at a time and you're ready to change that. Well, today we are going to talk about how to plan ahead effectively so that it becomes easier for you in the future. So let's dive in. Hey, teacher bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the present teacher podcast. I'm a first year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actual classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom. We're going to make it happen here.
Speaker 1:In order to plan ahead easily, what we need to learn is to batch. Before we dive in how to lesson plan quickly, let's talk about what batching is. Batching is the act of grouping similar tasks together. When you task switch and go from one thing to another, on average, it takes about seven minutes for you to refocus on that new task. So let's give you an example. Let's say you have an example of a to do list of 20 items you need to get done today on your prep and just from switching from one task to another, that's going to take you about 140 minutes just to refocus on what you were doing in the first place, whereas let's say you have a to do list of the same five things. Let's say you write five weeks of lesson planning. That's going to take you substantially less amount of time to refocus, depending on your environment, because you're not switching from task to task. So let's say you have a to do list of responding to that family's email, contacting your admin about something, grading those papers, finishing your lesson plans for next week and printing tomorrow's activities. All of those are going to add up quickly and it's going to take you a lot of time to refocus from one thing to another. Whereas if you just set out maybe an hour 45 minutes at a time to batch out as many lesson plans as you can, you're getting it that much more done faster because you're not jumping around doing little things at once. It's a lot like an assembly line. If you do similar things at once, you become more efficient and then it becomes a lot easier.
Speaker 1:I first ran into this during my college days. You see, during my college courses, one of the things they often had us do, which were, was KWLs. It was three things you know, three things you wanted to learn, or questions you had, and three things you learned. Now, instead of going through and doing all the different assignments for all the different classes, I had one hack I did was this course was online and you could access all of the assignments ahead. I went ahead and I did all of the assignments, all the KWLs, for that class, ahead of time, making it that much more easier and I was actually working ahead because I had them all done. Another example of this would to be making a bunch of cookies. If you were to create one cookie at a time, from start to finish, it's going to take you a lot longer to get to a dozen cookies, whereas if you were to make a dozen cookies from the get, go and put them in the oven at once, it's going to be that much more faster and efficient for you to create a dozen cookies.
Speaker 1:So now that you know what batching is, let's apply it to lesson planning. You might be wondering how do I go about batching lesson plans. Well, if we go back to the earlier example, let's say that you are planning each day, the following day, or maybe you're just planning one week ahead at a time. It feels like you can never get ahead. Instead, we are going to do more than one lesson plan at a time. Let's say that you sit down for 40 minutes and you make a goal of batching out four weeks out instead of one. Now I know what you're thinking. No way can I do this. Well, that's what my client said before she joined, leaving work on time, which is a program of mine. She was always staying late, she was planning out for the upcoming week and she always felt behind, no matter how hard she worked, how late she stayed. Now, her and her team plan four weeks out, consistently, without even thinking about it. So I'm here to tell you it's possible. If she can do it, so can you. And here's how.
Speaker 1:The answer to your problem is to theme your days. Pick one day this week you are going to write out all your lesson plans. Let's say, for example, you choose Monday, as are going to be my lesson plan days. So on Monday, use it down and you write lesson plans for the next two weeks. After you do that for a couple of weeks, then become faster and more efficient at it. So now you start batching three weeks of lesson plans at a time and then four weeks at a time before you know a year, a month ahead, and it's as easy as it was, if not easier than, when you first started lesson planning this year. Start off small with a goal of batching just two weeks out and then start adding as you go. The more faster you get, the more you do it, the faster you become at it.
Speaker 1:Now you might be wondering aren't there other things that I could go about batching? And the answer is absolutely. You can theme your days. So every system is two plus weeks out at a time. Imagine if your lesson planning, prepping, grading, communication, data, classroom organization and all of it was prepped out and ready to go weeks in advance.
Speaker 1:That's what I teach inside of my program leaving work on time. I show you how to batch everything out weeks out at a time so you don't have to work another weekend again, unless you want to, of course. But if you're thinking, yes, this is exactly what I've been looking for, I want to invite you, with your permission, to join ReadySet Prep, a three day challenge for new teachers, which is a free three day challenge to get you confident in getting more done on your prep and less amount of time, and at the end of this challenge, if you feel like it really resonated with you, you will be invited to join. Leaving work on time, where I've walked teachers from around the world on how to get more done during the week, like my client who now batches four weeks out at a time with her team, or my other client who was able to set boundaries with her time so she can be present during the weekends with her kids at home. So if you feel like, yes, this is what I've been looking for, I'm ready for this. I feel this is going to be really good for me, I want to invite you inside the challenge, which you can find in the link down in the description down below.
Speaker 1:Overall, if you're wondering how to lesson plan quickly, it's the answers through batching. Today we talked about what batching is. We talked about how to batch your lesson plans and other areas you can batch in your school day to save you time in the future. Now, if you're ready to take the next step, I want to invite you to download the prep like a pro a first year teacher's guide, to find out more on how you can confidently get more done on your prep in a less amount of time. If you want to take it a step further and you want me to be the one to walk you through step by step, I would love to have you join us inside the ready set prep, a three day challenge for new teachers. Or at the end, I will invite you to continue working with me by joining the leaving work on time program.
Speaker 1:As always, remember we are stronger together. I'll see you in the next one. Teacher Bessie Bye. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope that you were able to take away some value that will help you thrive inside and out of the classroom. It would mean the world to me if you could take five seconds right now and leave a review on this podcast. And if you found this podcast especially helpful, make sure to take a screenshot of this episode right now and tag me on your socials to let me know you're listening. As always, remember that we are stronger together. With All the Love in the World, helena, aka the President Teacher. See you next time, teacher Bessie.