Bridging the Gap

Lesson Plans and Standards have a gap between them. Sometimes the gap is much larger then we would like. I have been to schools where the idea was simply to take the standards and create the lesson plans around them. All you needed to do was select the standard, then make the lesson build up around it. But I think we could do better. I teach in a setting that is not traditional. The time frame we teach in is different. We teach in Quarters and students can enter and exit the class at basically any time. So I can experiment and test different approaches. What I usually do is create lesson plans that I feel will help the students be successful. Then I go back and see how many standards I cover. I then try to see if any other standards would fit into those lesson plans. I don't force a standard in, but sometimes another standard will just naturally fit into what lessons I am teaching. This may sound odd and maybe I am not communicating it well, but it is working for me. I used to do the exact opposite. I listed all my standards, then started filling them into possible lessons. This did accomplish the basic goal of covering standards, but never felt right. It seemed to constraining and I needed a little more freedom in my teaching.