We spoke with May, a high school English teacher, about how she uses TeacherMade to help organize her lesson planning and update her worksheets into interactive assignments for her students.

How do you incorporate TeacherMade in your lesson planning?

In a perfect world, teachers would have plenty of time to plan the most rigorous and engaging lessons. Unfortunately, teachers have too many things to do and too little time to do them. Although planning is one of the most important aspects of teaching, there are days when a teacher needs to come up with a lesson quickly. The tools in TeacherMade make it easy for teachers to create last-minute digital worksheets and plan in-depth assignments that allow students to engage deeply with a lesson.

How do you convert your dependable, tried-and-true worksheets with TeacherMade?

Having taught for over twenty years, I have many tried-and-true worksheets that I can modify every year. However, as useful as these worksheets are, I created some for reading, writing, and choosing the correct answers. With TeacherMade, I can easily and quickly upload my tried-and-true worksheets into the app and further enhance them. I can add video or audio links, make parts of the worksheet capable of auto-grading, have students insert images, and even have students record themselves. The tools in TeacherMade refresh my tried-and-true worksheets and make them interactive and fun.

Using TeacherMade keeps students from creating multiple accounts online

Besides my own teacher-created worksheets, there are more online resources nowadays for both teachers and students. Some of these resources involve teachers printing PDFs for students to write on, which serves a purpose but might not be as exciting for students. Then, some online resources require students to sign up for accounts. Many students already have a lot of account usernames and passwords to remember. Sometimes, students lose or forget them, especially if they do not regularly use a particular online resource.

With TeacherMade, I can tap into the usefulness of these online resources, such as Commonlit, without the hassle of having my students create accounts. I can have a teacher account and then pick and choose the lessons I want my students to work on. After uploading the worksheet into TeacherMade, I can stick with the original directions or use the TeacherMade tools to turn the worksheet into an interactive digital activity. I have many options with TeacherMade and can be as creative as I want. This makes lesson planning enjoyable for me and doing the work enjoyable for my students.

How do you use TeacherMade to adapt and reuse lessons for different classes?

Another challenge with lesson planning is having multiple preps. I am lucky that I have only two. I teach 10th and 11th grade English, but it’s common for teachers to teach more than two preps. With TeacherMade’s Color Block and Teacher Text, I can easily adapt one assignment for both classes depending on the content. For example, AVID has fantastic graphic organizers that I can adapt for my junior and sophomore classes. 

Do you use TeacherMade to repurpose worksheets for different grade levels?

After uploading any worksheet into TeacherMade, teachers can transform it and make it fit almost every grade or topic. The general layout and depth of engagement are similar, but each class can use the worksheet for the content that it is working on. The rigor and value of the assignment are not lost. In fact, they are further enhanced. The TeacherMade tools make it easy to repurpose worksheets by grade and by content, which saves me time.

How do you use TeacherMade for formative and summative assessments?

TeacherMade is certainly handy for creating quick digital worksheets, but TeacherMade’s tools are also excellent for creating longer summative assignments that focus on the big picture of a unit. I can incorporate multiple skills such as close-reading, writing, listening, inquiry, and speaking into one assignment. The assignment can become a portfolio or digital showcase of skills and content knowledge students have gained from a lesson unit. The possibilities are endless. I can be creative with how I elevate the ways my students engage with a text.

Do you use TeacherMade for co-teaching or group collaboration?

Since some teachers do get the luxury of planning with their peers, TeacherMade is a valuable tool for group collaboration. Whatever is created can easily be shared so that all teachers in the group can assign the same assignment. Therefore, regardless of which teacher a student has, there is consistency across all grade levels. On the other hand, teachers can also adapt an assignment for their specific classes.

How do you use TeacherMade to organize your lesson plans?

Finally, TeacherMade allows for creativity and ease of lesson planning and allows teachers to make folders and subfolders to organize their lessons. I like to keep my digital files neat, so being able to organize my assignments is important to me. All the tools in TeacherMade make lesson planning fun and less time-consuming.

TeacherMade is a valuable resource for teachers looking to upgrade their lesson planning. TeacherMade helps organize current lessons and makes new and old assignments interactive and memorable for students.