Lesson Planning & Activity Planner

Preparing Your Lesson Plans

When getting started, it’s important to note that, although generally important, the standards of what students should learn each school year are an unnecessary starting part of lesson planning. A good standards-based curriculum such as Time4Learning will have the courses set up to systematically teach the standards that the students are expected to learn.

The Time4Learning curriculum includes lesson plans for parents that follow the sequence of the online lessons. Although most parents start by following the suggested sequence, the curriculum provides tons of flexibility and allows members to skip lessons and/or complete them in the order that is best for their student’s needs and goals.

Thorough lesson plans will typically include the following information:

• Objectives/goals
• Warm up activity
• Lesson / instruction of material
• Opportunity for practice
• Assessment

Although the structure of lesson plans may change by course, you’ll typically find that a lesson consists of instruction of material, practice to apply the new knowledge and skills, and then some form of assessment to measure understanding. This approach, similar to the 5E inquiry-based instructional model of Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate, helps students build on what they already know about a particular topic and then add new knowledge.

Lesson Planning by Grade

Time4Learning members have access to the scope and sequence for all the subjects and courses available within the online curriculum. Useful for lesson planning, a scope and sequence typically includes the topics and concepts that will be covered, in chronological order, in a particular subject or course. From objectives to assessments, our comprehensive lesson planning features save you time by including all the information you need to start homeschooling.

To access our lesson plans by grade, use the links below.

Benefits and Features of the Time4Learning Activity Planner

In addition to providing comprehensive lesson plans for each grade, Time4Learning also includes a number of useful tools to help homeschoolers create schedules and plan their year.

The first is our Curriculum Calculator that helps parents determine how many activities their child must complete daily, weekly, or monthly in order to finish the homeschool year by their target end date. The Curriculum Calculator is ideal for families looking for more freedom and flexibility in their homeschool. Find out how one family keeps their homeschool organized and on track, from lesson planning to reports, with Time4Learning

For those looking for more structure and specificity, the Activity Planner is the best option. This tool allows parents to create detailed schedules for an entire year that divides the work into weekly to-do lists. Parents simply enter a start date, any holidays or scheduled days off, and an end date.

Planners can be created for a day, a week, or an entire school year. When students log in, they’ll be able to see what needs to be done. As they complete each lesson, they’ll mark as complete. If a student happens to get off schedule, no problem. The planner can be updated accordingly.

Parents can choose either specific activities for each subject or simply select all the material available. There is also an optional feature when creating a planner that allows you to choose what you deem a passing grade. If the required score is not achieved, students will see an icon that lets them know that they need to redo the activity.

Below are just some of the additional ways that the Time4Learning activity planner helps parents.

• Detailed plans automatically load with the lessons from your children’s courses
• Ability to select custom start and end dates to keep students on track
• Option to add breaks for holidays, spring break, summer, etc.
• Customizable plans allow parents to remove entire chapters, lessons, and activities to customize the curriculum
• Parents can remove activity types such as quizzes and tests in bulk, rather than deselecting each one
• Created plans can also be printed as either PDFs or Excel spreadsheets
• Option to assign activities to specific days of the week so students only see that day’s assignments upon logging in
• Ability to see completed work versus what still needs to be done
• Parents can mark activities as completed from within the planner
• Students can leave messages for parents in the planner and vice versa