Are you a music teacher (or other teacher) looking for a lesson plan template that can help to streamline your lesson planning and save you time? Teachers have enough on their plates. Spending time writing out detailed lesson plans is just not on the menu. And yet many of us are required to have posted lesson plans.
In this post I will show you how I plan what I am going to teach and how I am going to teach it AND how I translate that into written lesson plans if needed.
Why Lesson Plans Are Important
Yes. Planning out what you are doing from one week to the next really is important.
Your teaching should have an overall arc, with certain concepts that you plan to teach and how you plan to cover them all within the course of the year. Not only that. You have to consider what steps you need to do to prepare students for the skills you want them to master. And how they will apply that learning after they have learned it. Each skill leads into the next, building on students’ knowledge.
Without some degree of planning, you are just throwing random information at them and hoping something sticks. Like going on a voyage with no map. Could be a fun adventure but more likely you’ll just end up lost.
For more details on what to include in your lesson plans, you can check out my blog post – Lesson Plans for Music: 10 Crucial Things Your Lesson Plans May Be Missing.
How I Lesson Plan
When I am planning my content for the year, I use a grid. I have 1-2 main concepts that we focus on per quarter. I use the grid to plan activities to introduce, learn, review and apply new concepts.
Click here to get a free copy of this Lesson Planning grid!
Want a little more detail? No problem! I’ve got a video all about my three step system to lesson planning.
Need a quick summary?
- PICK 1-3 skills to focus on for the grading period
- PRIORITIZE your main content
- PLUS more fun!
Check out the Lesson Planning for Music video for all the details!
Formal Lesson Plan Template
If you are in a district that requires formal lesson plans to be written and submitted to your admin, I will show you what I have done in the past to keep things as simple as possible.
Find Out What Is Required in Your Lesson Plan
Every school is different, so make sure you’ve checked all the boxes of things that need to be in your formal lesson plan.
Fill In the Lesson Plan
The first time you will need to fill in everything on the lesson plan. Learning Targets. Your scale for your learning goal. Essential Questions. All the stuff your district or admin have stated that you need to have in there.
I have a section where I write the lesson sequence, and I copy and paste activities from my planning grid into my formal lesson in the order I want to do them.
Copy, Paste and Edit for Future Lessons
For all future lesson days, you can simply copy and paste last week’s lesson and edit.
I have found that 90% of the things I have to fill out on formal lesson plans stay pretty much the same from week to week or changed by a word or two. With a couple quick tweaks, I could produce lesson plans for each week in record time.
Free Lesson Planning Template
Now that you’ve seen the system, it’s your turn! Grab this free lesson planning template and get started on making your lesson planning process into a quick, simple process you can put on repeat each year.
Other Blog Posts Related to Lesson Planning
How to Teach Elementary Music Class Through Purposeful Play
Lesson Plans for Elementary Music: 10 Crucial Things You’ve Been Forgetting
5 Responses
Hello Erin,
Your example lesson plan template is lovely and I would like to purchase a copy to customize for myself. I did not find it in your shop or on TPT. Is is something you can make available to buy or share? I would love to get access rather than try to generate myself in your format. Thank you~
Yes! I actually just turned this into a free resource. Click here for the Lesson Planning Template.