Creating a Lesson Plan Template - Project

This project is designed to save teachers time when they go to reconfigure their lesson plans for the next year or create new lesson plans. The focus of the project will be to create a template that represents a specific style that is constructed in such a way as to make it quick to read and extremely flexible.

The first thing to do is to create a page design that will facilitate the lesson plan design.

• 8.5 x 11 paper

• landscape

• .67 margins to maximize space

• table that not only has a heading but also has 5 columns for each day of the week

• stylized text for easy reading and quick changes

To create the physical limits of the page open a new document and select Format-Page. Then select the Page tab and change the settings to reflect the settings that you see in the image below. Note the margins are set to .67. if you were going to bind this on one side you may want to increase those settings on that side of the binding.

Once the page is formatted with the appropriate settings, insert a table. Choose Insert-Table and then insert a table with only one column but two rows. This will allow you to create a General Heading with dates for the week and also a sub heading with additional information that you may want to add.

One heading and two rows are used for this first table. The border is also included to create easier eye recognition of categories.

Here is the example of the completed table with two rows.

An additional table must be added to get the format that is usable. So once again select Insert-Table and this time create one row with 5 columns.

Once again a border is included.

When you insert the second table it will represent 5 days of the week for the lesson plans. In the image below you will see what it the tables will look like in raw form. Once again two tables were inserted to create this view.

In order to see exactly what it will look like place your cursor in the second column and hit return until you force your table length to reach the bottom of the page.

Now you should have a working skeleton.

Place the daily headings at the top of each column and adjust the font and size the way that you want it to look. Once that is done insert a new table in each daily column. This will allow each column to have 7 additional rows that you may adjust independently. The purpose of 7 rows for each day is to represent 7 periods, the example shows that Monday now has the additional 7 rows.

This illustration demonstrates that the rows are all independent. This feature is important as each day will have different situations arise in which you will enter different text. This ability to nest tables within tables is a great feature that you should capitalize on when creating projects.

Before you save this document as a template be sure to check fonts, font size, justification in each row and column, etc. because you want to make it as easy as possible to use the template.

Once you have all of your settings correct then you will select Save As and choose a template. The purpose of saving this document as a template is that it is something you will be able to reuse time after time.

In OpenOffice 2 the template extension is .ott, save it with a description name.

In order to use the template choose File-Open and select the template. If you do not see the file make sure you are viewing all files. Once the template is open then choose Save As and save it as the file you would like to create, for example Week32. Now you may enter the necessary information in Week32. Do this the first week and see if you need to make any changes, if you do make those structural changes to the template it will carry over into the next week and you do not have to make those same changes.