The 3X5 Flexible Lesson Planning System “How to” Presentation

THE CARDS

Mmmm, What are all these 3X5 index cards for? When you opened your Unit Study kit and came across all those 3X5 cards you probably wondered what they were in there for. Well, they are in there to help save you time when you do your lesson planning for this study. This Power Point presentation will show you how.

First, look inside the box and notice that the cards are ‘locked’ into place by two raised tracks located on the bottom of the box. This will keep the cards from spilling out if the box is accidentally dropped.

Notice that some cards are blue in color. These are objective cards. All white activity cards located in the section directly behind the objective card will work toward that objective.

Notice that some cards are white in color. These are activity cards. These cards describe specific activities that your children can be assigned to do.

Though the cards will lock in for transportation and storage, they are easily removed. Give it a try. Gently grip a white card and pull up to remove it from the track

This portion of the card tells you what the topic is and will aid in re-filing the card once you are done with it.

This portion of the card tells you what age range or skill level the activity is appropriate for.

This portion of the card gives you a general idea of how long the activity will take and how much ‘time credit’ to give your student.

This portion of the card explains the activity that your student can be assigned to do. Sometimes an activity will need books, videos, etc from the unit kit. They will be mentioned here.

On occasion, an activity will require non-kit items. Typically, these will be common items from around the house. You will find a list of the items needed on the back side of an activity card.

No more forgotten resources: I collected lots of resources, ideas, activities, and came across great library books on topics that we would be working on in the future. The problem was that by the time we got to that unit, many of these would be forgotten and lost track of. I would remember them after we were finished with a unit. Grrrr.

With the card system, I could carry blank 3X5’s around in my purse. When I would see a great resource at the library, video store, etc I would jot them down and file them under the appropriate topic when I got home. New resource purchases could be noted and stored without fear of forgetting them. The card would remind me once we got to that unit.

A Photo-Album Planner will help you to expand the usefulness of the cards …

The Lesson Planner Use a 4X6 sleeved photo album to set up your lesson planning system. Consider how many students you will be planning for, and select an album with that many columns or rows. I now have 4 children being home schooled so I have moved up to a super-sized album with 4 columns across. You may even want a column just for you.

Why 4X6 sleeves when the cards are 3X5? By using the 4X6 sleeves, you have room to attach stick-it notes (in yellow here) for special reminders to yourself, the teacher.

Set-Up the Album: Along the edge, tab a different page for each day of the week and divide the un-tabbed pages between them.

In my album, each column is for a different child. OPTIONAL: At the beginning of each year, I think about that child’s specific ‘need areas’ for each subject. I print these onto card stock (one per weekday), cut them out, and place them in that child’s columns. This helps me to keep a big picture view as I plan each week’s activities. On the next two slides you will get a close up view of these cards.

Now let’s look at the weekly planning level. Peruse the 3X5 cards for the activities that you will be doing that week. Once selected, just slide them into a sleeve for the day/child/timeslot that you want it to be done. If during that day you do not have time to get to that activity, merely slide it out and move to another day’s sleeve.

Scheduling Tips to make your 3X5 system really help your day run smoothly

Plan for limited resource use such as mom’s time one-on-one, computer/internet, VCR, etc. In the example below, the children’s activities are scheduled so I can be quietly working one-on-one with my oldest doing Saxon Physics, while my middle two are working on the computer playing an optics game (unit activity) together. My three year old (far left card), is scheduled to be watching Sesame Street.

That’s it … It takes a bit to set the system up, but it will allow planning to roll along much more smoothly and allows a lot of flexibility if plans change.