Hi guys, welcome to my channel. So today I'm going to do a teacher plan with me, but I wanted to do something a little bit different. This is going to be specifically for preschool age children, and I just wanted to give you a simple template that I think that you could use for development. categories and so we're going to focus more on child development and we're going to focus less on academics so I'm just going to show you some resources what I use this is not curriculum specific so you could take what I'm going to show you here today and I think adjust it modify it pretty much to any curriculum that you have you the activities can change the way that you write these can definitely change but I just wanted to give you a quick layout that I use either when I'm pressed for time or at least just a starting off point for when I create lesson plans in the classroom so this is going to be targeted for like I said preschool so anywhere between the ages of two and five and so I just wanted to show you you what I do and hopefully it will be helpful for you.
Okay, so the first thing that I wanted to talk about were just some resources. So this is a really great resource. If you guys haven't heard of this before, this is a super book and this is the preschool version. This one is very old, but I just wanted to show you kind of just the inside of it in case you are starting out as a new preschool teacher or pre-k for this matter.
And it's basically grouped by category and then it has a bunch of different activities This one I believe is from about 2006-2007. So I'll just open up the front for you. Please excuse all of my tabs and everything.
These are just name tags. So okay, this is going to be the first section. And it says listening and speaking.
So what they have done is they've created little activities to kind of go along with the category of listening and speaking. So you're going to get some directions. maybe there's a song you can do there are some directions so basically you can just open this up to any section that you need an activity for if your curriculum doesn't provide you activities i know our curriculum some parts it has suggested activities other areas it does not so this one is letters and so we have something called a letter game and then it gives you a little explanation letter detective so i think you guys kind of get the gist of this book. It is something that I would definitely recommend for anyone who is a first-year teacher or if you're a veteran teacher and you just want to switch it up.
So you can probably purchase this at your local teacher supply store. I'm sure that you can also purchase this online. Superbook actually is very similar to Mailbox.
So if you're familiar with the Mailbox category, the Mailbox magazine. This was made by the mailbox. So it's basically, I would say probably a year maybe because it's pretty thick of the mailbox subscription. And it's just in one book.
I want to say, let's see if I can get you a price for this. Might not have it. I can't remember how much I paid for it. I want to say maybe $20.
But like I said, this is at this point about 10 years old. So. You can probably find this one on Amazon if it's possible. I'm not sure.
They might have an updated version. So I would definitely check it out. Just go to the mailbox.
I think it's just themailbox.com or you can just Google Mailbox Magazine and just type in preschool. So this is a really great resource. I've used it, as you can tell, many, many years.
So I wanted to show you this. And then for what we're going to do today, these are just resources I have in my TeacherPay Teacher Store. I have a... list of common developmental skills and they're broken down by category. We have social-emotional, gross motor, fine motor, visual motor, communication and language, cognitive and spatial relationships using objects.
So if you pick up any child development book, you'll be able to get a list of common developmental milestones or skills and for me it was easier just to pull out the ones that I use the most and put it into one document. The other thing that we're going to use today that I use in my classroom every year, this is just a year at a glance, and I have it broken down by month. So we have the theme for the month, we have the letter for the week, and then we have a book of the week.
This is also available at my Teach or Pay Teacher store if you want to check it out. If you're looking to purchase something like this or if you want to make your own, of course you definitely can. I have one for the fall semester on the front. then spring semester is on the back so we are going to use these two things and I'm going to go ahead and get started Like I said previously, you know, take what you can from this video.
If anything that I show you or tell you is helpful, that's great. You can also modify this any way that you need it. So what we're going to use today is just a typical lesson plan book and we're just going to keep it really simple. I did want to let you know, like I said, that since this is not curriculum specific, you can also take this and pair it with something that is more specific. For example, this is an actual piece out of the curriculum that I use to teach in my classroom.
So we have the name and the type of the activity. We have, of course, the milestones for development, what categories they hit. Also, our kindergarten objectives for students that are going to kindergarten next year. Kind of just gives you an idea and then your objective is at the bottom. So you can definitely take this and partner with a piece of your curriculum like this or maybe you just want to start out with this and as the year goes on just add and take you know you can definitely do that as well okay so the way that I have my day broken up is basically by sections now this doesn't have to meet an order this is not the exact order that I teach throughout the day I teach a half-day program so this is definitely definitely going to be applicable to half-day program so I have social learning centers we have fine motor skills We have language expression and also language comprehension skills, gross motor skills, general knowledge and cognition skills.
Then I have a small space for circle time. We have a theme activity. We do an activity for our letter focus.
And then just at the bottom, you can write down your letter of the week and also your story of the week. So the way that I do this is I take my developmental skills checklist and I basically just start at the top. So what I'm going to do, for example, for Monday for my social learning centers is I'm going to start with the materials that you have in your classroom. So that you are going to need to figure out what materials you have. Then I would just look at the first one, social emotional.
The first one is follows environmental expectations. So when we're talking about environmental expectations, what we're talking about are those verbal and nonverbal cues that you're going to give your students to maintain personal space, to follow classroom rules and classroom directions. So if you teach preschool, you know that there are some students, especially, you know, the little two-year-olds, which is totally expected, that need a little more guidance when they are following classroom rules. So what we're going to do is you're just going to take your pen and just for an example, I know that in my classroom we have miniature cars and we have pretend people.
So this is what you're going to do. Okay, so for my social learning center for Monday, and you can make this either one group or two groups. It really just depends on your classroom. The acronym that I always use is TSW, which means the student well.
So I'm just going to write TSW the student will use many cars to participate with peers and follow expectations. So, Monday your social learning centers, you are going to use mini cars or people and like I said, You can switch around the materials that you have. You can create two groups if that works better for you.
So this is what they're going to do. So your goal for your social learning center for just Monday, for your first group, is just for your students to follow the classroom rules. That may be have them sit at a table and sit in a chair and stay in a chair until the timer goes off. If you're doing flexible seating, that could mean that they sit on one of the rubber balls at the table. They may not even be at table.
This is just going to depend on what you do in your classroom. So now we're just going to go down to the next activity, and that is going to be find motor skills. So I just go back to my developmental checklist, and I'm going to go down to find motor.
And the very first one, it's reaches for objects. A great way that you can have students just practice reaching is puzzles. So what you're going to do is you are going to go. to your block and you're just going to write TSW.
You don't have to write TSW. It's just something that I've done for years and it's just a habit. Anytime I write lesson plans I always write TSW. So the student will And let's see where we are.
The student will reach for objects to complete puzzles. Okay, so your learning target for your fine motor center is going to be just to have your students reach for objects. If you are teaching a general education classroom of preschool that might be something that comes very easily to your students however I'm a special education teacher so that is a goal that is very difficult for a lot of my students but like I said you know you can bump this up a notch if this is way too easy for your kids and if it's challenging for your kids it's something that you can definitely work on or you can also add different skills before you get there so the next one is language so I'm just going to go back to my skills checklist and And for language, let's see, we have follow a two-part or a three-part directive. So when you're doing this, I like to make it fun and use something like puppets or something that's really engaging.
You know, just use your best judgment when it comes to this. So our next activity for language is going to be following directions. So for this one, the student will... use puppets to follow directions and of course like I said before you can definitely adjust this so going down to gross motor go back to the list and the first one is to sit unsupported so for this one the student will sit unsupported which means they should be able to sit upright by themselves. This is something that you probably want to do on the floor, either on a mat or on carpet, and this is really going to focus on that core strength.
If you have students that have very low muscle tone, or some students that are coming out of surgery, anything like that, you want to help them with that. So the student will sit unsupported and roll a ball. Between peers and I'm sure most of you have done this at some point as a child Everybody sits in a circle on the floor You make sure that you sit upright and you just roll a ball back and forth. So moving on to general knowledge I'm just gonna go back and for this one Let's see. The first one is classifying objects based on one characteristic.
So you can do something like Shapes it doesn't have to be anything complicated at all. So then you're going to go and you're going to write in the student will classify objects and you could also put pictures by one attribute. So if you decide to use shapes there are tons of different shapes that you can use. So you either are going to choose five basic shapes and you are going to sort them by one attribute meaning a color or you are going to choose one color and you are going to choose a variety of shapes so you just want to make it as simple as possible definitely start off with one attribute and then you can just keep moving for circle time i wanted to talk a little bit about this my circle time activities will definitely not fit in this small little box But I can let you know what I do during circle time.
Let me grab it really quick. Our circle time is always at the carpet. However, the students do, most of them sit in chairs.
So it's going to be a group activity that we do, of course, in the beginning of the day. We're going to go over the daily schedule. We're going to go over rules and what our plans are, whether we have a speech group or whether we are going to the playground.
We are also going to touch on pre-academic skills and this is going to be really great for your students that are moving from preschool into kindergarten. So what we are going to talk about is how to say hello to someone, how to greet them, how to say their name, how to recognize their name and their picture. We are going to do a lot of sign language.
I sign the more we get together. We sign a good morning song and that is American Sign Language that we're using. We're going to talk about the season.
We're going to talk about the month. We are going to talk about what letter we are on for the week and we are going to talk about what story we are reading for that week so that can definitely not fit into this circle time rectangle so that's written out on a separate sheet of paper and that's why I said that this could just be you know supplemental to your curriculum or your plans that you already have so what I would write in here is anything additional that I want to do specifically to the day to add into my circle time something that is irregular for example something like Valentine's Day if you were going to use circle time to have everyone hand out their Valentine's you could write that in if you're having a guest reader for that day during circle time this is where you're gonna write it okay so then we're just gonna move on down to our theme activity so the theme is just going to be based on the chart that I have that I use so for September Our theme is back to school and animals. So a great activity that you can do for theme for back to school is to have ask parents to send in pictures of their children of their family and you can create a family tree. Something else that's really simple and easy that you can do for animals is you can just look on Pinterest for different hand prints and footprints that you can turn into animals.
That's always really fun. So moving on down next is our letter focus. So the first week of school just to keep it easy the letter is going to be A.
So what we're going to do here is we're going to do something that has to do with the letter A. The first really month of school I like to show students vocabulary picture cards that have to do with our letter. So since our letter this week would be letter A we are going to use photo vocabulary cards and I just want to tell you that I personally after you know years of working with small children I feel like that pictures or photographs to use as vocabulary cards are a lot easier for them than say a hand drawing or an illustration so when I look for images I don't type in clip art because if you use clip art then it's basically looks like a coloring book And for real world connections, you're going to want to have photographs of what you are talking about.
So I start off by showing them just tons of pictures of items that all begin with the letter A. And then at the bottom, it's a place to write in our story. So the first week of school, the story that we go over is called Preschool Day.
and it is by Linda Leopold Strauss and it's a really cute book if you have not checked it out I would definitely recommend it the that is Monday completely written out and then basically you're going to do the exact same thing on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and so on hopefully you guys find this helpful if you have any questions about the way that I write my lesson plans if you would like to see an entire week for any month at any time just let me know and I can definitely sit down and write everything out for you if you need theme activities theme ideas or you are just curious you can always visit my teacher pay teachers store I've got a bunch of free resource resources on there primarily for special education teachers but also some things I think that could be helpful for inclusion teachers I've got a couple of things that I use for you know personal planning on there I've got some trackers 31 day trackers that are on there so anyways if you guys have any questions for me at all please leave them in the comments check out my Instagram and I'll talk to you my next video bye