Developing Lesson Plans

Developing lesson plans and units is a really exciting part of becoming a teacher. I love researching about what I will be teaching my future students. With the use of the internet, when it works properly, research is so much fun. However, my biggest problem when it comes to unit development is fitting all the puzzle pieces together. I have so many different topics and ideas I want to teach my future students about and yet they don't seem to all fit together nicely. As we worked on the unit for our presentation I found myself wanting to take it in so many directions. It was very helpful to have decisive group members who cut and spliced the unit into nice succinct pieces. As a future teacher I know I am going to have to learn to be more decisive in order to make my job easier. Also I know that in being realistic I can not cram a million different things into one lesson plan. It is important to focus on the big picture and fill in with the smaller ideas as is necessary.
I have no problem understanding the basic lesson plan, which I am so thankful to Rene Nicholson for drilling into our heads. However, designing the unit is definitely still a little more of a hazy concept for me. I understand the basic idea but I still have difficulties with making all of my lessons fit into one unit. I know that as I work more and more with units this too will become second nature.
When I started this program I always believed that I wanted to teach kindergarten so therefore most of my lessons thus far have been geared towards that age group. However, as I began subbing I realized that the older grades were alot of fun as well, so now I am adjusting my lesson planning and working with some of the older grade levels as well. I know that especially in this economy, you never know what grade you are going to teach so I am glad that I am getting the opportunity to expand my horizons.