Advanced Lesson Planning
Mastering the Art of Time Chunking (Without Losing Your Sanity) by Joe Clausi
Ah, lesson planning, the never-ending puzzle that’s always due tomorrow. If you’ve ever found yourself frantically scribbling down ideas at 10 p.m. while binge-watching Stranger Things, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. But what if I told you there’s a better way? Enter Time Chunking, the hero we didn’t know we needed, swooping in to save us from the underworld of planning chaos.
Here’s some steps that have been polished throughout the years, when faced with too many last minute lesson planning situations, until one day - I sat down, and began to get a grip on it. Below you will find advice that has been tried and tested over the last 25 years.
Step 1: Shift from “Oh No, It’s Tomorrow” to “I Got This”
Let’s face it—too many of us are planning day-by-day like we’re contestants on Survivor. We plan one lesson at a time, crawling through the week as if we’re going to be voted off the island by Thursday. Time chunking is your way out of this madness.
Instead of reacting to the school day like an unexpected fire drill, time chunking lets you step back and proactively plan. In other words, you can actually have a life outside of school. Imagine sitting down for a weekly session of planning and sipping coffee without breaking into a cold sweat. It’s revolutionary, but it begins with the mind shift.
Step 2: Micro-Tasks are Your Friend
Instead of spending hours staring blankly at a screen, thinking “What am I even teaching next week?”, let’s chunk it out, so the process makes practical sense.
Here’s what we mean and assuming we’re using the only real way to plan a lesson - the workshop model:
15 minutes: Review your content and determine what your main points to teach are. List them out in the order that makes sense.
15 minutes: Brainstorm open ended questions for each main point, the answer to which will solve what you have to teach the students that day - in order to correctly answer the open ended question. Create a question for each main point.
15 minutes: Brainstorm the information needed to answer each open ended question, as this information will be the basis for your mini-lesson portion of your plan.
10 minutes: Choose your practice strategy and your share out strategy, then determine your exit strategy.
10 minutes: Determine your starter activity, making sure it connects to prior learning.
These 5 time chunks, organized as such - will enable a longer lens for planning a few days or weeks in advance.
Step 3: Calendar it Like You Mean It
Calendars. The things we know we should use but often look at with dread. We’re supposed to just magically know when to plan, right? Wrong! The calendar isn’t just for dentist appointments and parent-teacher conferences—it’s your planning BFF.
Set a weekly time for planning that works for you. Maybe it’s right after your students leave and you can still hear the echo of their chaos fading into the distance. Or maybe it’s first thing Monday when you’re fresh and hopeful.
“Whenever it is, make it a thing!”
Stick to it. And no, this is not a date with Netflix—you can’t skip it.
Step 4: Buffers—Your Secret Weapon
You know those moments when everything goes off the rails? The tech crashes, your lesson flops, or Johnny decides that now is the time to explain the entire plot of the latest video from Mr. Beast to the class? That’s where buffer days come in.
“Schedule extra time each week for things to go sideways!”
Whether it’s a review day, an enrichment project, or just some much-needed catch-up time towards the end of a semester or quarter, this built-in flexibility ensures you don’t hit panic mode if things don’t go as planned. Because, let’s be real, they rarely if ever do.
Step 5: Collaborate or Commiserate
You’ve chunked your time, calendared your week, and built in your buffers. Feeling good? Excellent. Now let’s make it even easier—by not doing it alone.
Talk to your fellow teachers. I mean, you’re all in this together, right? Share resources, co-plan units, or at least vent about how Brenda in the next room has already planned out her entire semester while you’re still deciding what you’re teaching tomorrow. Sometimes teamwork makes the dream work, and sometimes it’s just nice to know you’re not the only one winging it.
Step 6: Create a routine, it’ll help!
“It’s Monday, so you know what that means…”
If your students become trained to know that on Fridays to start the class, we vent in our journals, this means you didn’t have to plan that part of the lesson - or, the planning of that part of the lesson rather only took 2 seconds to complete.
Get in the habit of Tuesdays being vocab day, and Wednesdays being quotation day, and whatever you want Thursday and Friday to be - do it. But it’s that much less that you have to plan, it’s that much more of a routine placating to the executive functions of learning, and it’s going to increase participation, engagement, and productivity with that familiarity. Win-win for everyone.
Conclusion: Plan Smarter, Not Harder
So there you have it. Advanced lesson planning through time chunking, with a side of humor and a big dose of reality. No more scrambling or living in survival mode. You’ve got this!
Next time you find yourself staring down the lesson-planning abyss, just remember: break it down, chunk it out, and laugh along the way. After all, teaching is hard enough—you might as well make the planning part a little easier (and way more fun).
Now go, fellow time-chunking champion, and conquer your planning with the grace of a well-caffeinated superhero.