CA State Common Core Lesson Planner

The CA State Common Core Lesson Planner is a state-of-the-art curriculum design assistant for teachers. It streamlines the creation of California standards-aligned, Project-Based Learning (PBL) lesson plans that weave together academic standards, vocational trades, student choice, and detailed teacher resources.

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🌟 Use Case & Purpose

This application is built to help educators design comprehensive, classroom-ready project assignments centered around a core topic or concept.

• Student Agency & Choice: Generated projects give students 2–3 final product options/modalities (e.g., essays, presentations, videos, or podcasts) to choose from. Each modality contains its own set of distinct requirements and deliverables, but all align back to the core lesson standards.
• Complete Instructor Guide: Generates teacher-facing details including measurable learning objectives, milestone activities, vocabulary glossaries, scaffolding recommendations (for English learners, special needs, etc.), and standard-aligned rubrics.
• Flexible Timelines: Integrates a handy duration estimator accommodating multi-week project structures with modular milestone steps (Launch, Inquiry, Drafting, Revision, Presentation).
• Vocational Customization: Optionally tailors academic concepts to specific vocational trades (e.g., HVAC, Carpentry, Nursing, Security) to provide immediate real-world relevance for CTE or Job Corps curricula.

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🚀 Key Capabilities

1. Bring Your Own API Keys (Decoupled Architecture)

Configure your own API keys for the major generative AI providers. The application supports:

• Google Gemini (e.g., gemini-2.5-flash, gemini-2.5-pro, gemini-1.5-flash)
• OpenAI (e.g., gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4o, o1-mini, o3-mini)
• Anthropic Claude (e.g., claude-3-5-haiku-latest, claude-3-5-sonnet-latest)
• Custom Base URLs/Proxies: Supports forwarding requests through CORS proxies or aggregators (e.g., OpenRouter) and local model servers.

2. Comprehensive Grade Levels & Required Subjects

Generate lessons tailored to all California Department of Education (CDE) required subject areas:

• Grade Levels: Individualized options from Preschool / Transitional Kindergarten (TK), Kindergarten, 1st through 12th Grade, and Adult Education.
• Required Subjects: Covers English Language Arts, Mathematics, History-Social Science, Science, Visual and Performing Arts, World Languages, Career Technical Education (CTE), Physical Education, and Health Education.

3. Standards Caching & Expiration Logic

To optimize token usage and avoid redundant API requests, standard suggestions are cached locally:

• 90-Day Lifespan: Cached standards expire automatically 90 days after generation.
• Seasonal Expiration Bounds: All cached standards automatically expire on January 1st and June 15th to align with school terms and standard updates, saving token counts and compute cycles.

4. Persistent Saved Projects Library

• Session Autoresume: Automatically saves active generation progress so refreshing or closing the browser will never lose your inputs or results.
• Local Projects Library: Save completed lesson plans persistently. A dashboard list on the home screen allows loading plans straight to print/view screens instantly, or deleting them when no longer needed.

5. Polished Export & Print Layouts

Export plans as PDFs or print them. Print layouts automatically hide interactive buttons and settings banners, applying clean black margins, proper page-breaks, and rendering a print-only application header.

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📸 Application Interface & Walkthrough

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of the planner's interface:

1. Project Setup & Vocation Focus

Choose your grade level (Pre-K/TK to Adult Ed), required subject area, optional Career Technical Education (CTE) vocational trade focus, and enter your lesson topic.

2. Configure Criteria & Topic Parameters

Input specific concepts to contextualize the learning objectives and standard alignments.

3. Review & Select Standards

View AI-suggested CCSS and California State Standards tailored to your topic and grade, and select the specific standards to assess.

4. Comprehensive Project-Based Lesson Plan

Generates student product modalities, driving questions, weekly timelines, collaboration structures, formative/summative rubrics, scaffolding support, and downloadable handouts.

5. Persistent Saved Projects Library

Store completed plans in your browser's local library to view, reload, print, or delete them later.

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🛠️ Running Locally

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher recommended)

1. Clone & Install Dependencies

Navigate to the directory and install required npm packages:

npm install

2. Configure Environment Variables (Optional)

Copy .env.example to .env.local to configure development parameters. The app will pre-populate the Gemini key if GEMINI_API_KEY is set in your environment:

cp .env.example .env.local

3. Run Development Server

Start the local development server:

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your web browser.

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🧪 Technology Stack

• Vite & React (TypeScript)
• Tailwind CSS (v4 integration)
• Framer Motion (Page transitions & modals)
• React Markdown & remark-gfm (Clean formatting for lesson briefs & rubrics)