How to Write Lesson Plans for Elementary and Middle Schoolers

Is it time to begin thinking about what to teach in your homeschool next year? Regardless of what curriculum you choose, creating a lesson plan to include Bible Principles is refreshing. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to cover a basic lesson plan in this post based on the Noah Plan® curriculum overviews. Primarily, it’s because we use the Noah Plan® as a spine for our education. But as I mentioned earlier, you can write lesson plans with Bible Principles using any curriculum. In either case, the main goals are to teach the following: God’s Providential Hand, Christ is the focal point of history, Bible Principles, and how to reason and relate from Scripture in all subjects.

One of the key questions is, where does an individual begin? And how does a person decide on Leading Ideas, Biblical Principles, what type of notebook pages to use, and how to write Reason and Relate questions? You’ll see that it’s not so intimidating as it seems. And soon enough you’ll be setting out to help your children flourish in it.

The Supplies You Need

As you embark on this journey, you’ll want an ample supply of necessities to help you along the way. In essence, the necessities include:

A Bible
A concordance
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
The Noah Plan® Curriculum Overviews
Books that the overviews recommend for resources
Graphic organizers
Prompts for Reason and Relate questions
Sheets of paper for note taking
A spiral bound notebook for writing lesson plans

Consider the Weekly Topics in the Overviews

Regardless of the grade you’re planning to write lesson plans for, each subject is broken down into quarters. And within each quarter are nine weeks of lesson topics. Altogether, you can rely on these as your compass.

For me, these more often than not are what I utilize as my Leading Ideas as I write lesson plans. Generally speaking, this works well because leading ideas are easily made into topics. And the overviews provide that weekly topic for us.

Furthermore, when it comes to discovering Bible Principles, it’s helpful to understand the approach to Bible Principles. Depending on the topic, it may be satisfactory to go with any of the seven Biblical Principles that Teaching and Learning America’s Christian History addresses. Or, you may do key word studies about ideas, actions, or attitudes that you read about in any of the resources you’re learning from. In the long run, this is where you’ll need to keep your Bible, concordance, and Webster’s 1828 Dictionary handy.

Resource Books

In the event that you don’t know, the weekly topics in the overviews tend to be based on the headings in resource books. For example, this is the case for weekly topics in the Noah Plan® History and Geography overviews. Definitely, in the sixth grade overviews, they coincide with the headings contained within Streams of Civilization.

Notebook Pages

These are the trail mix that sustains you and your student on this adventure. And they may consist of notes copied from the board, narration from the lesson, and graphic organizers. Surprisingly, you can easily pull together Principle Approach® lessons and choose which type of notebook page to assign your student. In fact, they’re essential for helping students organize and process information. Additionally, encourage narration in a story format. To put it differently, have your student share more than facts. For instance, you want your student to be able to express the cause to effect, God’s Providential Hand, and what Bible Principles apply to what he has learned.

Reason and Relate Questions

Notably, this takes some time to come up with these. But the more you put it into practice, the quicker you’ll be at it. And the more you study and research and ponder about things you read, you’ll see that you naturally have questions. Ultimately, your own questions can be the basis for questions you write for your children to reason from.

What to Highlight

Even if you can’t think of any Reason and Relate questions for each lesson, you’re children can ponder and research other important aspects. Whenever possible, you want to have your children consider the cause to effect in situations. Help them to develop the habit of pausing to ask, “Who or what is in control? And what is happening because of this?” In due time, this will become a thought pattern for them in their daily life.

Another key point is to help them see God’s Providential Hand in all circumstances. Often times, it can look like the world is spiraling out of control. But regardless of man’s response to God, He is still sovereign and in control. Repeatedly throughout history, we see how God takes the worst of situations and works them for the good of those who love Him. And He does this to move His Story forward.

Note Taking

It amazes me how common a lack of note taking is among many homeschooling families. For many, digital is all the rage. But so much is missed when we fail to write notes. Among several reasons for why you should take notes and expect your children to, God has wired us for this. Of note, God has commanded men throughout the ages to write. In addition, note taking and journaling engages us in our learning.

Narration

Where to begin? Whether your writing skills are strong or not, journaling your narrations will sharpen your writing skills. And, you become invested in the topics you’re researching as you write lesson plans. Granted, you don’t have to write narrations for every grade. Certainly, you can assign your more independent learners to simply read out of the resource books. In either case, narration helps individuals to better retain information.

Lesson Plans

All in all, it can be as basic as writing down your subject by quarter and week. And jotting down your Leading Idea and Bible Principle. Again, the more you practice this, the easier it becomes. And if you want to read directly out of resource books, just write down the book title, pages numbers, and heading. If you’re like me, you might even prefer to highlight the headings and specific content you want to read to your students. But I’d like to encourage you to try narrating the lesson content for yourself as a story. It can liven up lessons and help captivate your students’ attention.

Blessings!