This year, the paperwork has become more cumbersome than ever! I'm not sure how it is elsewhere, but in NY, it feels like my district is trying to be the overachievers because we are being asked to do things for APPR that other districts haven't even thought of, particularly in the area of the specials teachers! One of the things we had to do this year was choose one class to be observed in. I would personally rather have my observations take place over all of the grade levels I teach, but my union won't let me. Since I'm teaching high school this year, I'd love to be observed there to get feedback, but I was still required to choose one area (and this is all from what our union has decided...sometimes I think they think more about the core area teachers than they do the special area teachers!). I would have chosen a high school level but I'm still being observed by the elementary principal (which doesn't really matter) but the next aspect of our observations is what made me stick with elementary because it will be less work for me in the long run, especially as I get closer to popping out this baby! ;) With whichever class or subject area we have chosen to be observed in, we have to fill out weekly lesson plans (and as rumor has it, next year we will have to do this for ALL of our subject areas/grade levels). And I don't mean just copy off our plan book anymore. We have to have full, written out lessons. If I chose Studio Art, I would have to have complete, written lessons for every day of the week, including daily objectives, bell ringers, exit slips, etc. While I'm working towards being able to do that, I am certainly not doing that now. By choosing an elementary class, my lessons are condensed down to 2-3 day lessons and more manageable to write out. Considering I have 12 different classes to prepare for weekly, I'm taking the easy way out! Last year I created and started using this lesson plan format to write my lessons and organize my grade level curriculum. I printed out a bunch of these templates and simply hand-wrote my lessons, so I was technically already doing this. The administrators liked my template and used it to create a common core template for everyone to use. Of course, when they did that, they left out all of the my art stuff. Now, I had planned on using these templates for my substitute when I go out on maternity leave so for me, the art parts were way more important than the Marzano stuff. I asked if I could alter my original template to include what was missing from theirs, and thankfully, they agreed. Of course, I ended up having to do two revisions because they wanted the Marzano stuff on the front, but I'm still happy with my ending template. This is my new lesson plan template. I have posted this to the SmARTteacher as well so you can find it there. If you open it in Word, you can simply click on the boxes in each category to mark what you are using, and then simply type in all of the information. I created a slightly different one for each level based on what the different listening strands are for K-2, as well as the basic common core math and ELA standards for each grade level. This is my district's lesson plan template for everyone to use.