Lesson Planning via Chalk.com

At a recent PCT meeting I was shown Chalk.com by a colleague. This website is an online resource for teachers who can use it to plan lessons and units, upload resources, and organise assessment standards and learning objectives. Since its introduction I have been using it for just that!

Chalk has been really handy for collating all of my lesson plans in an easy to view format. It allows me to easily click between a month, week, and daily view (each level providing basic through detailed overviews of the plans I have input). The month view is handy in unit planning to gauge an idea of the overaching sub topics I am teaching within each class. The week view still gives the sub-topic overviews but also shows the first few paragraphs of each lesson plan. Finally, the daily view shows me each lesson plan in full for that day.

Chalk has a feature in which I have been able to upload all of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) learning objectives and NCEA achievement standards into my profile. Consequently, in each lesson that I plan I can attach the required standard. This has been fantastic as it provides me with an easy way to show links between content, the NZC, and NCEA for my year 11 class.

For me personally, this website is perfect. I am quite the scribbler - that is, before this my lesson plans were all written on scrape peices of paper in a simple format - warm up, main, and conclusion. This has allowed me to continue with that simplistic format but in an easier to manage way. I also have access to my lessons anywhere and everywhere as Chalk has its own app. And, last but not least, its assessment standard functions are perfect for the "click of a button" insert into the lesson plan - as opposed to the hassle of find, copy, and paste when writing lesson plans in word.

#PTC4 #PTC6 #LessonPlanning