Sample Lesson Plans

Not quite sure where to start? After you review the Training Videos you may wish to download one of the following Lesson Plan files we created to demonstrate different ways to structure your Lesson Plan so that it can be used efficiently.

• Different activity per day of week
• Lessons with Tests
• Multi-disciplinary plan
• How to use the sample file

Different activity per day of week

For this type of Lesson Plan- your activity will change based on the day of the week.

The simplest manner of entry is to create all your Monday items; then the Tuesday items; then Wed; etc - completing each day in turn.

Create your first Monday item and click COPY
Choose whatever Page/Lesson/Chapter increment you want from the choices listed
For the Sequence number:
Start on Seq 1; increment by 5; so that your Monday items will have sequence numbers of 1; 6; 11; 16; etc.

Create your Tuesday item. This time you'll start on Seq 2 and increment by 5

Wednesday items - start on 3; increment by 5
Thursday items - start on 4; increment by 5
Friday items - start on 5; increment by 5

For this type of plan, I'd also choose to use the GROUP field to add the week number so that I can easily see the breaks between weeks. This is optional of course.

Lessons with Tests

This is a sample lesson plan for a curriculum with tests interspersed with lessons.

In this example - there are tests at the end of each lesson; tests at the end of each unit; and a final test. Here's how I put it together:

1. entering the Unit Test and Final Test first
2. tweaking THOSE entries so that the sequence numbers are exact, based on the (changing) number of lessons and test between them.
3. Next, I put in the Lesson Tests. I did this for Lessons 1-7; then Lessons 8-14; etc
4. Finally I put in the Lessons for each of the sections - making sure to check the box telling Tracker not to reuse a sequence number that already existed for the same subject/course/resource combination. Again, I did this one section at a time - Lessons 1-7; Lesson 8-14.

Again - starting with the LEAST frequent item - and adjusting first as needed - and then fill in with the next least frequent; always ending with the daily lessons being sure to check the box to not reuse sequence number when setting the lessons.

If this were my plan - I would probably take the time to enter the lesson titles as a TOPIC for each item. I might do it all at once; I might do it as I'm ready to use the items the first time. It would depend on my mood and my time available.

I'd also use the Group Edit feature to quickly change the Resource name to something more specific - if that was my preference. When entering the items, you want the Subject, Course and Resource to be identical in each entry so that you can make use of the "Skip used sequence numbers" option when entering the lessons around your existing tests.

Group Edit would also allow me to set the points possible for those items which I intended to grade.

Multi-disciplinary plan

Your Lesson Plan can contain more than one Subject or Course. Curriculum like Sonlight; Konos; and Tapestry of Grace lend themselves well to this type of plan. This is also the way you'd set up a Unit Study - with tasks in multiple subjects and/or various activities to make up the entire area of study.

These types of plans can be a bit more time-consuming to enter. Just take your time and work through it.

For these plans, I personally like to have the sequence number equal the school day number from the Instructor's guide. That makes it easy for me to refer back to the paper schedule if I need clarification.

You might also find it easiest to attack this kind of plan by entering one resource at a time. Use the Copy functions to add as much info about the resource as possible. Then make use of the edit-in-the-grid capabilities of Tracker to tweak whatever you need to - like the Page/Lesson/Chapter or Directions fields.

How to use the Sample file

You must be using Homeschool Tracker Plus version 5.3 Release 5 or newer in order to open the following sample file

1. Download this file to your desktop
2. Unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop (should be a single file called SampleLessonPlan.mdb)
3. Open Homeschool Tracker
4. Select Database | Utilities from the Tracker menu bar
5. Make a mental or written note of the current location or your existing database file
6. Choose "Point Tracker to an existing database file" and direct the program to open the sample file on your desktop
7. After you are done reviewing the contents of the sample file, you may repeat steps 4 and 6 to re-point Tracker to your original database file