Are you feeling constantly behind, never able to keep up with the kids at school. Are you always scrambling to plan the next day? What if you could plan once and feel prepared all week or longer? Today we are talking about how to shift from survival mode to systems thinking and feeling calm at work. Follow this planning system for new teachers and feel the relief!
What’s the secret…pre-planning your year. When you prepare ahead of time, you are not randomly putting things together, this allows you to intentionally be responsive to the students in front of you. Strong planning, like what experienced teachers do, isn’t about doing more, it is about building systems for yourself so you can avoid overwhelm and panic.
Start with the Big Picture: Your Year Plan is the Anchor
Building a comprehensive year plan that incorporates the curriculum, big ideas, and tentative timelines allows for you to have capacity to focus on the present teaching and differentiation for your students. This, in-turn, reduces your decision fatigue and anxiety every week. Your year plan should include:
- Curriculum standard connections
- Big skills and competencies the students need to understand
- Tentative timelines that can be modified if necessary
- Integrated assessments
This is the secret…also include your unit/lesson plans
The document gets rather large and encompassing, but offers you a central location for all lesson materials (such as links and activities). It also gives you the ability to look throughout the year for diversity within instruction, assessment and to accommodate for the students in the room.
If you want in-depth support to help you build a year plan, please look at the post “5 Basic Steps for Curriculum mapping and year planning” or “Mastering Curriculum Planning One Unit at a Time“.
Breaking It Down: Planning in 2–4 Week Instructional Blocks
Building a system that supports your preparation of materials ahead of time gives you a foundational cycle to rely on. Planning ahead with a 2 – 4 week window allows you time to adjust your lessons and instruction if students are having difficulty with a topic and need further instruction as well as gives time to efficiently prep the material. This cycle includes the intentional preparation you need to do and anchors your lessons within your year plan all while relieving the daily scrambling. Your cycle should include:
- Curriculum goals
- Lesson topics
- Small group plans
- Materials to prep
If you want an easy-to-use system template that supports your planning through the cycles, check out the Weekly Planning Starter Kit resource.
Teach, Then Respond: Let Data Drive Your Next Moves
Building a strong year plan and adjusting based on the students allows you to shift from “planning everything in advance” to “planning responsively”. Easier said than done as a new teacher, so let’s talk about how you do that? At the end of the planning cycle (2 weeks), reflect on where the students are in their learning using observations, formative assessments and student work samples. Afterwards, you can adjust your teaching and lessons for the next cycle through a variety of ways such as the rate you teach, student groupings for work, and the instructional strategies you implement. Good planning doesn’t mean you teach everything exactly as planned but rather have the direction you are headed and can adjust around the students.
Use our Reflection tool at the end of every cycle to help keep you on track going forward.
Build Your Resource Bank as You Go
As a new teacher, no one is expecting you to have all your resources prepped but you can build a resource bank as you go to help for your future teaching. After each cycle, determine which materials to save from the previous lessons. This requires a method to organize yourself so you can pull the materials (such as slides, anchor charts, worksheets, etc.) at a later date and save even more time in the future. Again, this all can be housed within the year plan (especially if you utilize google docs or another electronic management tool). That being said, there is always the need for physical tools or materials such as exemplars. Choose a system that works for you but I highly recommend organizing yourself by unit and lesson to further reduce your stress when you go to find it in the future.
The Compounding Effect: Why This System Changes Everything
As you progress through the years of your career this system will give you further payoff going from manageable effort to becoming more efficient and sustainable. This system is the secret behind experienced teachers making things look easy.
Practical Tips to Get Started (Without Overwhelm)
I know you are already feeling overloaded so learning something else doesn’t seem plausible but I promise you it will pay off.
- Start small – one subject or unit at a time
- Aim for the structure of the 2-4 week cycle, not perfection – even seasoned teachers don’t get it right all the time
- Use templates and repeatable systems, like this one 😉
- Set aside a specific time each week to reconnect with your planning cycle, utilize the routine
- Give yourself permission to adjust everything as you go
You Don’t Need to Plan Every Day to Be a Great Teacher
Our goal is not to plan perfectly but instead to create a system that works and is sustainable! Reframe your thinking from this cycle being an addon to it supporting your productivity so you can breathe. I challenge you to try it…you will never go back.
And remember to check out our New Teacher’s Weekly Planning Kit for FREE to help you get started.
If you want to look at more information about planning systems check out this sources.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/batching-lesson-plans
https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/streamline-your-lesson-planning-process
