What is "REAL" teacher planning?

This is what I original thought was teacher planning:

            “I would start off with re-familiarizing myself with the text. (Dr. Kajder has often times mentioned that she believes in doing the work with the students and I agree.) The next thing I would do is ask myself what I expect the student to gain from the text. From there, I would formulate questions that would (hopefully) stimulate a discussion with the students and gett them to formulate ideas based on the text.”

My idea of what lesson planning is rather vague and not all that well thought out. Then again, I am taking LLED 7408 for a reason: to learn how to plan.

I watched all but maybe one or two of the videos on Flipgrid and there are a few things that opened my eyes to planning. Let’s start off with the things that I found similar to my novice idea of teacher planning, since there aren’t too many.

I did notice a few people who said they start from the end and work their way back, such as Rachel and Seth. Also, Seth seems to work in a much smaller scale, working week to week as he goes. He said he spends about three hours every Sunday working out his week’s plan, which is what I thought planning was.

Now, there are many things that I did not put into consideration for planning. I wasn’t thinking about long term planning. I only thought about lesson-to-lesson planning, which is only a scratch on the surface of planning. Mary, the social studies teacher, plans out everything. She puts into consideration snow days, absences, and course work that may take longer than others. She’s very detailed where as someone like Lisa is more “fluid” in her planning. I also did not put into consideration the template or device I would use for my lesson planning. Most of the teachers seem to only use one template, which is probably what I would think to do. However, Frank brings up the idea of using different platforms for his planning. He uses a template for his broad lesson planning and then blackboard for his more detailed planning.

Overall, I think the one thing that shocked me the most from listening to all of the teachers came from Lisa who said teacher planning doesn’t get any easier.