Curriculum and Lesson Planning

Reading Chapter 10 of Oliva and Gordon's Developing the Curriculum felt like a refresher from my teacher training in the 90's.  It's amazing when I think about it how much time and energy I put into lesson planning back then.  My lesson plans on a day to day basis are not nearly so detailed.  My actual lesson plans today are pretty brief.  As I have gained confidence and fluidity in teaching the details have dropped out of the picture.  I know that this is an area that I could spend more time on and focus.  I fit my entire teaching day's plan on a double sided sheet of paper.  I usually list the focus, the name of the activities, a brief description, and an curriculum link letter or number that corresponds. Sometimes (depending on what it is) I may list on the sidebar any differentiation that I need to provide for a particular student.  When I write my lesson plans, I know what they mean.  I wonder if someone else coming in would?  Would my admin know what I'm teaching?  Would a parent be able to come in and flip through my daybook and find evidence that I have in fact taught the grade 4 curriculum to their child?

I become very aware of my own deficiencies (laziness?  efficiency?) when I have to write out a day plan for a supply teacher.  It takes so long!  I write out everything.  Reading this chapter made me wonder if there was a better way that I could be lesson planning?  I don't want lesson planning to take hours upon hours for everything I do.  But it really shouldn't be so brief that no one else knows what I'm doing either.  I think this would be a good goal for me next year.  Maybe even to practice writing out a full lesson plan once in a while (that could be publishable) would help to re-focus and find a better lesson planning system for myself.