Planning Support

Why Implement Planning Templates?

There are several benefits to our organisation adopting shared planning templates. They key benefits include consistency of quality, ease of collaboration, ease of understanding (from colleagues or leadership), transferability across multiple platforms, shared professional development of particular Google Apps and greater time management.

Using a shared planning template does not take away from the individuality of a teacher, or their ability to be creative within their spaces. On the contrary, by using a shared system, we create more time to be able to be creative and focus on the teaching and learning aspects of our jobs. Once these systems are learned and mastered the use of them becomes more efficient, which creates more hours in your week to extend your learning opportunities and address learning needs in your class.

Consistency of Quality: As explained in the Checklist, high quality planning that is purposeful and reflective of the needs in your class is a necessary tool for improving the actual quality of your teaching. We may veer from our original planning as opportunities arise in the class, but we should never arrive to work unsure of what our objectives are for the day, and what resources we need to meet those objectives. As educators, we should set high standards and examples for each other and our students. This means ensuring that our planning is accurate, spelling/grammar/punctuation is correct, our students names and data are accurate, and our weekly overviews match the information set out in our guided sessions.

Ease of Collaboration: By using shared platforms, it is much easier to share and create together. The information will be easier to digest as it presented to each other on a familiar system.

Ease of Understanding: Similarly, if we all understand the platform we are using, less time is spent navigating the documents we create, and more time is spent looking at the details. This allows us to easily share work, learn from each other, and keep each other accountable.

Transferability: By limiting the number of Apps or platforms we use as an organisation, we make it easier to transfer our work to different places. Google Sites and our in-class TV Sets are highly compatible with Google Slides, so producing our planning, taskboards/tumbles/follow up tasks/model book lessons on Slides means that they are able to used on our two key resources (Sites and TVs). Information will be transferred in its original state, and there won't be issues with formatting (a common problem when using multiple platforms).

Professional Development: By using the same platforms we are all learning about the same tools, so we can better support each other in our growth. It is about speaking the same "technical language", so that we understand each other more easily.

Time Management: The planning templates have been designed to maintain important information week to week (student data, grouping, LTP links), while the timetable and specific activities are updated weekly. This means less information is being changed in your planning, and you are never starting from scratch. By using tools like hyperlinks we can reduce the amount of doubling up and recreating that may normally take place - it also makes it easier to locate resources being used. All of these benefits amount to extra hours in your week, so that you spend that time on professional development and extending the quality of your tasks and teaching.

Note: If you want to make additions or edits to your planning templates that improve your practice, this is all good! It is recommended that you work on these changes with your kaihautū so that the learning can be shared and all teachers can benefit from ideas. The templates that we have are a "best guess" about what we think will work well in your classes, but they are adaptable and open to new ideas.