Well, yeah - WHAT about lesson plans??

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely support this holistic business of lesson planning. I believe that:

- efficient teachers should practice this activity daily, either planning the lessons for the current day, or the following day;

- efficient teachers should base their 'lesson planning' on intensive preparation which needs to take place weeks, possibly months before the lesson. This, in most, contexts, would be called 'planning', but we will call it 'lesson scripting' to avoid confusion.

- efficient teachers should focus this 'lesson planning' on purely pedagogic aspects, tailoring their activities, their style and their delivery to each particular class. This should be skilled, challenging and interesting work, and it needs to be done pretty much at the last minute (so you can take the previous lesson's experience into account). The duller, more process-focused aspects of lesson preparation - lesson scripting - should be done well in advance, removed from time-pressure, in a stress free environment....

... AND here's the thing: I am going to say nothing more about this wonderful business of lesson planning, which I hold in such high regard.  There are shed-fulls of excellent books and resources to tell you how to do it.  What I am going to tell you is how to do the preparatory work - so your lesson planning can be done in the time available; and how to tackle the 'other stuff', which gets in the way of good lesson planning.

But what about Lesson Plans?

I'm sure that lots of teachers looked at my list of plans and said: "what about lesson plans?".  Well, the fact is that the stuff we teachers call lesson planning is so broadly-focused that it doesn't really qualify as proper planning at all. It is a holistic activity which we carry out in preparing to teach. It involves not only what the teacher is going to do, but also the individual needs of each specific class, the teacher's own experience and development, as well as the strategies, policies and initiatives of the school.

This is fine, but there are two big problems: firstly, it all takes too long to do properly, and secondly there are far too many other things to do in the short time allowed for planning and preparation.

Once in a lifetime...

... well a bit more often than that, really.  Certainly once at the start of your career, and then every year or so, you should turn each Bread and Butter Lesson (BBL1) into a Lesson Plan Template, using your chosen presentation software (eg MS-PowerPoint).   If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I started off by saying that there were SIX essential planning documents for an efficient teacher. Well this one makes it EIGHT. Here's an example, which is too big to fit neatly...

A Bread and Butter Lesson

                 

We talked about Plans a bit, but I never explained what a Plan is.  A Plan says what you are going to do. Simples. It doesn't have to deal with resources, or techniques, or anything clever. You can add them on later. So in order to make a Plan, you just have to be absolutely clear about what you are going to do and in what order. Here is an example.  This is what I call a Bread-and-Butter lesson. Nothing fancy here - have a read .....                                                       

A Good Scheme of Work

A good Scheme of Work is really simple, like the example shown in the last post. It should be cross-referenced to:

1. The Gardening Calendar, which lists the Resources needed and the timing of presentation;
2. The Lesson Content Source (usually a textbook) which explains what those cryptic Lesson Content phrases actually mean; 
3. The Lesson Plans, which explain in detail what the outcomes, learning objectives, and activities are for each lesson.

If you look closely, you can figure out that the Scheme of Work really comprises two Plans dovetailed together. These are:

1. The Teaching Plan

2. The Assessment Plan

The Scheme of Work is valuable because it summarises in advance

- when assessment takes place

- what homework is intended

- how lessons are to be grouped together.

This last bit is important. It is shown by the vertical lines in the middle of the Scheme of Work. Nearly missed those, didn't you?  In the example, it shows that Weeks 1-4 and Weeks 5-8 are grouped together. This is important for lesson planning. As we shall see (can you feel the suspense building up?)

Schemes of Work - aren't they, like, really complicated?

The Thing to Remember...

The thing to remember is that Lesson Planning is Easy and Fun.

Unfortunately, the fun parts aren't easy, and the easy parts aren't fun.

This is a Department Calendar, dodo...

Now, here's a thing. I've just said that there were SIX kinds of planning document that every efficient teacher needs, and now I'm hitting you with number SEVEN. This is a document - ideally a single big spreadsheet-worksheet - which the school and/or the department should provide for the teacher. It should show all school and department actvities, events and deadlines in one easy-to-read form.

The great news is that if  you can lay your grubby little teacher-hands on a copy of this document, you can just delete the bits you don't care about (Concert by School Choir? No Thanks) and add in any dates which are important or specific to YOU, for example which days you supervise detentions, or when you have your Performance Review. It is really helpful if you can get ALL the key dates on one calendar, and this is the best way for an efficient teacher to do it. Just add in a new column to the right of the existing columns, and away you go...

Don't lose this post - I am going to rant on quite a bit about the column headed Reporting and Assessment Cycle

What the **** is a Department Calendar?

This is a Gardening Calendar, dummy...

An efficient teacher creates a Gardening Calendar for every course she is going to teach, each academic year.  It contains only the most basic information, but it gives a kind-of-map which shows what is going to get taught in each term. Of course, unless there is a miracle, no-one actually keeps exactly to the schedule they draw up at the beginning of the year, but it has three really big advantages:

1. It helps you to be aware if you get a little bit (or even a lot) behind plan
2. It lets you plan important dates (eg trips, moderator appointments) way in advance
3. It allows you to specify what resources you need - like text books - just once, instead of repeating the same stuff on every scheme of work or lesson plan.
4. It makes you find out important stuff, like how many weeks there are in each term.

I know, that's four.

What the **** is a Gardening Calendar?

The Thing about Planning...

Teachers need to make six different types of plan, just to stay ahead of the game. These come under two headings - some of them are specifically to do with Lesson Planning, but the others are exactly the same kind of planning that every professional manager or administrator needs to do.  Teachers get very confused about these two different types of plans.

Eh? What? No, not you, obviously. You don't get confused - you're really smart. It's the other teachers I'm talking about.

Here's the thing about planning....

What this blog is actually about

The theme of the blog is time management. The underlying philosophy of the blog is that teacher's stress results from two main causes - both starting with the letter B. 

1. Behaviour.  There's lots of help out there on the web to support you with this aspect of your work
2. Bureaucracy.  Not so much.  Till now.

There is of course a big difference between the two B's. The first of them is entirely logical - sharing a room with 20-30 maladjusted teenagers is likely to cause stress for any sane adult, but bureaucracy?  Really?   I mean who gets stressed over a few spreadsheets and a crumby boss?  Aren't targets and deadlines just a routine of everyday life, tolerated and handled by every cashier and call-centre minion?  Why is it such a big deal for teachers?  

Do not worry, dear reader. I will not make you work too hard. All of the above questions are rhetorical and I shall answer them all for you over the next few weeks.

Shock Horror

This is the first post of my blog for busy teachers. OK, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Try to relax. This blog may come as a bit of a shock to you. This blog is not - I repeat not - about children's learning. This, of course, means that it is different to pretty much every other Teacher's blog you have ever read. It is not intended to help your students, it is about YOU. We will barely touch on the kids, their learning styles, their educational needs or their behaviour. This is ALL about you.