Teachers across the nation were asked to switch to distance learning with an incredibly short turn around time. It’s really amazing what teachers can do when we know our students need us! Teachers were watching tutorials, attending trainings, connecting online, and sending screenshots to each other to support each other. They were researching best practices and implementing different methods, then revising their plans if they didn’t go as expected. Teachers have been sharing strategies that worked for them and their students. I wanted to contribute the distance learning daily lesson plan I used that helped me stay organized and communicate.
Background Info
You may have heard me talk about routine once or twice before, but here’s a short reminder of WHY routine is so important for teacher AND student success. Especially during distance learning and in a pandemic when much of our routines were in upheaval, providing some sort of structure for students helps them feel safe and know what to expect. With that in mind, I followed a pretty consistent outline for distance learning and it helped a lot!
Short note about structure – I know that every district’s expectations for distance learning was different than the others. In my particular district, students had been 1:1 for a long time. Our eight period day was split into two – odd numbered class periods on Monday and Wednesday, even numbered class periods on Tuesday and Thursday. Each day ended with open office hours any student was able to attend, and Fridays were for meetings, PLC, and planning for teachers, with our plans for the following week due on Fridays at 3 PM. Class levels were required to have the exact same plans – so my Spanish 1B co-worker and I planned and created together. Every class period started with a live Zoom meeting, then we were able to “release” students to work individually as needed.
Distance Learning Daily Lesson Plan Template
Part 1 – Heading and Reminder
- Date for classes (even and odd periods)
- Remember, blue = links! You can click them!
Part 2 – The Day to Day
- Learning objective(s)
- Whole class meeting – We started with the beginning of class routine. Then we did a lesson with Google Slides, a Blind Kahoot, Quizlet Live, GimKit, or another learning game. Then I’d introduce the individual activities, check for understanding, and dismiss them from the live.
- Individual Student Activities – These are activities students complete asynchronously. (Google Forms, Boom Cards, Kahoots, Edpuzzles, and FlipGrids) We purposefully tried to stick with the same 5-6 sites to keep students from feeling overwhelmed. We also used mostly autograding activities to help keep up with supporting the students and grading far more activities than we usually did in person!
Part 3 – Communication Hub
- List of all assignment links – I didn’t add this in until about halfway through the learning period, but MAN! It was so helpful! I just included a list of everything that had been assigned with the exact name as it was in the gradebook with a direct link to the assignments. This was helpful for students to find things they were missing, and also useful for me to copy and paste the list as I communicated with students, parents, and guardians about what they needed to finish!
- Link to Google Form to submit any questions (with notifications turned on so we didn’t miss any submissions!)
- Link to Spreadsheet of Answers to those questions
- Email Policy
Distance Learning Daily Lesson Plan on Google Docs
Want to snag a copy for yourself? Sign up below and I’ll send over the link to my Google Doc I used to format everything I just described!
