Set Goals
Determine overall goals: Once you’ve identified a few major skills which your students will need to succeed in life, determine some goals based on those skills. If you have a bunch of kindergarteners who will eventually need to read, for example, you want them to know their alphabet and be able to recognize simple words.
Set specific goals: Once you know what your general goals are for the class, think of specific goals which will serve to show you that those overall goals have been met. Have your kindergarteners from the previous step be able to read and write the alphabet forwards and backwards and read basic three letter words, for example.
Outline how those goals will be reached: Now that you know what you want your students to be able to do, outline the smaller skills which be necessary to get them to those larger goals. These will be mini-goals and will serve as a road map. With the kindergarteners, an example of these mini-goals would be learning each individual letter, learning to identify compound sounds, and then learning how to string sounds together.
Develop Lesson Plans
Outline the course to achieve education goals: Now that you have your educational roadmap, make a lesson plan which specifically lists how you will get them to each step in that road. Every skill that will need to be mastered in order to get them between those mini-goals will need to be planned and written down.
Consider learning styles: When making your lesson plan, keep learning styles in mind. Every student learns differently and if you want your whole class to have equal opportunity for success, you will need to accommodate these. Plan to use sound, visuals, physical activity and written material along with your lectures all in one lesson whenever possible.
Mix subject matter to build multiple skills: If you are in an environment where you can mix subject matters, such as science and English or math and history, do it. This will help students understand how information is applied and is more in keeping with the situations they will encounter in the real world. Life is not broken up into class subjects, after all. Find ways that you can collaborate with other teachers to provide your students with engaging, complex lessons.
