Best practices for lesson planning with My Colorado Journey

Lesson planning with My Colorado Journey is flexible, and can be adapted to any frequency, intensity or length of lesson that you wish. We’ve broken the process down below.

As the professional (teacher, counselor, case manager, program manager) review the Outcomes available in the system

My Colorado Journey has a variety of Outcomes, and we are always adding more! If you have not done so yet, create your own account within the platform. This allows you not only to view the Outcomes in more detail, but also gives you a first-hand experience of what your students will do when they create their own accounts later on. From the Goals page, add all the Outcomes you would like to explore further. You can now expand the Steps within each of the Goals to view the questions, links and tools involved.

Determine what Outcome and Goals support your student learning

Now that you’ve become more familiar with what is available, determine which Outcome and Goals support the lesson(s) you will be teaching. Within an Outcome, not all Goals may fit in - that’s okay! You can recommend just the specific Goals you need to your students later on.

Outline how many Steps will be completed each session

We encourage you to personally go through the activities within each Step to get a feel for the time needed. Many Steps include additional exploration, assessments and reflection for the individual. Depending on the size of your group and the length of time you have in each session, Goals will require different amounts of time.

Think about supplemental group activities to incorporate

The activities within each step are very individualized, and you may find you wish to add in additional group activities to supplement your lesson plans. This is a great way for students to share and support each other through this process. 

Post-planning

Your lesson is planned! Next up, have the students create their own accounts. Your own experience will help you determine how much time to budget for this. Students may also want to explore the platform and add Outcomes they are interested in.

Once your students have created accounts, you will want to review what Outcomes they have added and then assign your planned Outcome/Goals to the remaining student(s) who need it.