This FREE Weekly Lesson Plan Template for Seesaw is going to change your life!
I’ve been a fan of Seesaw for several years now, but I didn’t really know the power it held until I started using it for distance learning.
Up until last spring, I pretty much only used it to share pictures with my students’ families. I loved it because the pictures stayed private – I could share them with only that family instead of the whole class.
But I had never used the activities. I was vaguely aware they existed, but I didn’t know much about them. So when my school district decided to use Seesaw in grades K-2 for distance learning last spring, I was introduced to a whole new world. And it was amazing! Fast forward six months, and I’ve created more than 260 Seesaw activities. I mean, I love all things Seesaw.
(Side note: You can get 7 weeks of FREE Seesaw activities from me over in this blog post!)
What Seesaw was missing for distance learning
There were a couple things that were missing, however. I wanted to be able to put links in my activities. I wanted to be able to create one document that students could look at with all of the activities for that day in it.
To be fair, I was able to create a Google Doc and share that in Seesaw, but that was just an extra step. I wanted it all in Seesaw, but there really was no good way to do it.
The new linking features in Seesaw are a game-changer for distance learning!
But THEN, this summer, Seesaw made some incredible changes that made it possible to create something like that. With the features, you can link to:
- External websites within an activity (instead of in the description area)
- Pages within the same activity (example: a link on page 1 can take you to page 6)
- Other Seesaw activities that you have assigned to your students
As soon as I found out about these new changes, I had to play around with them! What I came up with was a Weekly Learning Plan template, and I was too excited to keep it to myself…I just had to share! Here’s a sneak peek of the first page:
How to Use the Seesaw Weekly Learning Plan Template
You can add it to your Seesaw library by clicking here, but first watch this video to see exactly how it works. And please note: you have to have Seesaw Plus or Seesaw for Schools to be able to add links & edit multi-page activities like this one.
Pro Tip: Use a Daily Plan Instead of Weekly
If you’re like me, you might not have an entire week planned out and ready to go. I prefer to just plan a day or two at a time…and if that’s you, too, why not try just using one day of this template instead of the whole shebang?
All you have to do is “Copy & Edit,” give it a new name (like Monday, August 31), then delete all the pages except the one you want to use. Then you can just post a learning plan for that day instead of the whole week. Easy peasy!
How to Make it Manageable for Students
Since I first posted this template and video, I’ve been getting lots of questions about what students will see, especially when it comes to linking other Seesaw activities.
Since you have to assign an activity before you can get a link for it, the activity is going to show up in their feed. But the Weekly Learning Plan will also be in their feed. That sounds like a lot of activities to sort through, but luckily there are some ways to make it more manageable for students. Here are a couple of things you can do:
Use the activities scheduler
When you schedule an activity for a future time & date, it won’t show up in the student activity feed until that time. But once you schedule it, you can get a link to it and add it to the Weekly Learning Plan.
If a student goes into the Weekly Learning Plan and clicks on a link to an activity that’s scheduled but not posted, they’ll see a preview of it but they can’t complete it. It shows the date & time that it’s scheduled for, which may be helpful for parents.
Here’s a tutorial on how to schedule activities:
Create a folder for Weekly Learning Plans
If you create a folder for the Weekly Learning Plans and always put them in it, you can teach your students to only go there to access their assignments. Then they can ignore the activities tab altogether. Keep reading to see how that works, but first, here’s a quick tutorial to show you how you can create a folder and add assignments to it:
What Does it Look Like From the Student Side?
So, now that we’ve:
- scheduled activities for the week
- added links to the Weekly Learning Plan, and
- put the Weekly Learning Plan into a folder,
what will it look like for students? Because that’s what it really comes down to…is this going to be easy for students to navigate? With a little training and practice, I think that’s a strong YES!
Watch this video to see how it all comes together:
Other Formats Available
I’ve also created a few other formats of this Weekly Learning Plan template that may be helpful for you:
Join the Seesaw Lover’s All-Access Club!
Did you know you that when you join the Seesaw Lover’s All-Access Club, you can get instant access to over 260 Seesaw resources created by Little Playful Learners? Plus weekly new releases!
You’ll also get lots of video tutorials for you, your students, and their families! And there are no monthly membership fees – you just pay once and you’ll have lifetime access to the Club!
Click here to see all the resources that are included!
Contact me if you have questions
It’s my hope that this Weekly Learning Plan template and set of tutorials will help you during distance learning. And please know that I’m happy to help if you have any other questions or need more guidance! You can comment below, or email me at amy@littleplayfullearners.com.
Happy teaching!
Classroom Management Series: Classroom Culture