Learning to prepare lesson plans through batch prepping is the number one thing that saved my teaching career. This life-changing structure has overhauled how I teach and has made me a better teacher with less stress and more time to do the things I love outside of school. Sounds too good to be true? Stick with me, because I’m about to change your life. No really.
This post is all about just 1 of my secrets to taking back my plan time and getting to spend more time on the things outside of school that bring my sparkle back. Want to spend more time doing the things you love? Drop your email below to grab the free guide to 7 secrets to saving you time, stress, and energy.
Tips for Teaching: What is batch prepping?
Before we get any further into how this works in my classroom, let’s dive into what batch prepping means. Batching is when you group similar tasks together. This saves so much time because your brain isn’t switching between a bunch of different tasks.
Think about how you grade. Let’s assume you have 3 different assignments to grade. Do you grade every assignment from 1 student before going onto the next student? No! You grade everything from Assignment A and then move on to the papers for Assignment B. That’s an example of batching. You have your answer key ready so you aren’t flipping all around. You are in the mindset to grade math homework before grading science labs. And your brain is focused on one task repeatedly.
Switching tasks slow down our brains. So sticking with one task for a longer period of time is better and faster for us. And we are all about saving ourselves time.
Prepare Lesson Plans for the entire unit
I have my batching tasks broken down into 7 groups so that I’m not switching all around and can get things done faster. This means that after 7 batching sessions, I’m ready for the next unit. While I would love to batch prep 7 days in a row, that isn’t possible with meetings grading and you know, teaching my students the current topics. But I can usually get my batch prepping for the next unit during my current unit so that I’m ready to keep rolling into the next set of topics.
Day 1: Calendar + Scope and Sequence
This step is one of the fastest if you already have your long-range plan done. I take my unit plan and convert it to the actual days of my school calendar. I work around days off, early release days, sub days, you know all the extra stuff that messes up perfect 5 day weeks.
Because I have my unit plan done, I just line it up with my calendar. If you don’t have a unit plan done, make one! Having a unit plan is the single most important thing when planning. Your district might already have one made up, or you can make your own. I have a template to help you with one in my TPT store. Get your unit plan done, then come back to this step.
In my unit plan, I have already decided what notes I need, activities I want to do, and assessments I have to give. Locate all of those resources & head down to more time-saving tricks!
Day 2 of Batch Prepping: Notes
Now that I know what I’m going to teach, the order in which I’m teaching, and how I want to teach each topic, I can get into the bulk of my planning prep. I start with notes sheets because I use notes most of the days in the unit. For example with this unit, I am using 7 notes pages, 4 activities, a quiz, a study guide, and a test. By prepping for 7 days to start with, I’m halfway done with prepping!
I choose to make a packet of notes for my students in each unit. I know what notes pages I’m using so all I have to do is make copies. If you aren’t pulling from a curriculum, you might have to make notes pages. This can be done a little quicker if you have a teammate that could split the work with you, or if you can find free resources from Teachers Pay Teachers to use. If you teach 5th grade math, I have a curriculum that is made to be batch prepped!
Students keep their packet of notes in their math folders. This keeps them organized and I don’t have papers scattered all over my room. To learn more about my math interactive notebook alternative, check out this blog post.
While I’m copying the notes packets, I’m making the answer key so that I have that ready to go. This saves me time later on and is a much better use of standing by the copy machine.
Day 3: Activities
During each unit, I usually plan a few activities to make lessons more engaging. I already know what activities I want to use thanks to my unit plan so I make any copies and print/laminate anything all on this day. While copies are being made, I am making answer keys to save myself time later.
This is also the step where I prep any station activities I know I want to use. I don’t always know what I want to have for stations at this stage of the planning but if I do, then I will make the copies now. If not, I plan those later, when it’s closer and in more real-time.
Not everything gets planned and prepped in advance. Teaching is supposed to be fluid and what your students need. Activities are sometimes where I wait and see what my students need to help them understand a topic. There are usually a few activities that I love and know really work so I’ll prep those. But I also don’t stress if not every single activity is prepped before the unit starts.
Day 4: Homework
Now that notes are done, I plan out my homework because it usually happens on multiple days in the unit. I have a textbook I’m supposed to use which luckily has an online homework platform that I assign from. So I choose a few problems for each day of notes and write them down in my plan book. I then go in and assign them to open and close on the correct days. If I am choosing a paper homework option, I will make those copies on this day too.
If you don’t assign homework, you get to skip this step 🙂
Day 5: Assessments
At this point, I have prepped for nearly every day! All that’s really left are the quiz and test days. I tweak any assessments that I need to and then run copies. Once again, while copies are printing, I’m making the key. This is also a nice time to make sure that I will have taught everything on the test. If not, I can make a game plan to teach it.
This step I sometimes do at the beginning of the unit, or right after the notes prepping to make sure that I’m not missing anything! My assessments are district created so I’m not creating assessments from scratch. If you are, I’d recommend starting with assessments before creating notes (so making this step 2) so that everything lines up.
Day 6: Exit Tickets
Exit Tickets are a valuable part of my teaching process, so I need to make sure that I prep them! I mainly use digital options (like Plickers!) so really I’m just taking problems and inputting them into the Plickers system. If I’m choosing to use paper tickets, I’ll make the copies. Even though I’m using a curriculum, exit tickets aren’t something that is pre-made so I have to add this part myself. To speed this part up, I will take problems from the textbook, or will search online for options. I also only have 2 problems so that it 1, doesn’t take kiddos too long to complete and 2, doesn’t take me too long to create.
If you teach 5th grade math and want this step done for you, click on over here!
Day 7: Bellwork and Learning Targets
This is a step that is always a plan but doesn’t always come to reality before the unit starts. Luckily, bellwork comes together pretty quickly if I need to do this each morning. I choose a problem (usually from homework) and screenshot it. I add it to my pre-created daily slide and away we go!
Over the summer I actually got ahead on this step and made a giant slide show for the whole year of bell work! That might be a nice project on a teacher workday, snow day, or whenever you’d like to dedicate more time to school. Or you can save this step and make it each morning like I typically do!
Learning Targets is another component that can be prepped ahead of time. Every grade I’ve taught, I usually take the easy way out and buy a set of learning targets on TPT. That way I have them done for the whole year and I can just switch them out quickly. If you teach 5th-grade math, I have a set ready to print for you. Sometimes, your time is worth money. And I Can Statements is one of those things for me.
Looking for other ways to prepare lesson plans faster and better?
While I love batch prepping my units, there are so many other ideas to help you save yourself time. Be sure to check out these blog posts and videos to find other helpful tips and tricks!
7 Secrets to Taking Back Your Plan Time
Time Management for Teachers: 10 Time-Saving Tips
Time-Saving Tips and Tools for Teachers
Thirty Time-Saving ‘Hacks’ for Teachers
10 Time-Saving Tricks for Teachers
Save Time Planning: 15 Proven Methods from Teachers
I’d love to know what are your tips and tricks on how to prepare lesson plans! Drop your tips in the comments below!
[…] you can see, most of my plan time is spent batch planning for the next unit (more on that system over here). Batch prepping really is the key to having copies, assessments, and plans in place before I start […]