Event Planning

Backmap to Create a Workflow

Access the Backmap to Create Your Workflow workbook here

When you have established the target date for your event, you can schedule key milestones for planning and set deadlines using a reverse engineering strategy. Gantt charts and timelines are extremely helpful for this process.

Location & Reservations

Where will you hold your event? What is the process for reserving the space? Who needs to approve it? Every event needs a location, even if that location is virtual. There will have to be a home and in most school environments, that event location will need to be planned and reserved in advance. If you don’t know the deadlines and the procedure for reserving, find out who knows and get that information today!

Activities

What will your attendees do during your event? Will there be workshops? Exploration stations? Large group presentations? Competitions? Lectures? Presentations? Hands on activities? Classes?

What will people do to gain the understandings, skills or perspectives that you identified as your desired outcomes? After you identify what they will be doing, you need to plan who will lead or organize the activity, what resources, tools, materials and supplies will they need, how they will complete the activity and if and how they will keep track of progress or submit their work. Reference section 1: What’s your Why to plan the activities for our event and consider the following questions.

Planning Deadlines

When your event is taking shape with location, reservations and key activities established, you can move on to developing schedules and timelines. It is time to put your plans on paper, create your progress benchmarks and create deadlines with your planning team.

Plan for at least a 1-2 day buffer for last minute adjustments. Automatically back your completion date up one to two days before the actual event.
Fill in the items that have to be produced, delivered or in place within 24 hours of your event.
For the two weeks prior to the event, create daily task lists.
Create weekly task lists and goals for the two months prior to the event
Establish monthly goals to accomplish something for your event every week until at least two weeks prior to the event to avoid the last minute rush and craziness.

Use the tables in the Back map to Create Your Workflow workbook linked at the top of this section.

Build a Team

You can never start too early to request help and many of your planning activities so far will be useful here.

Return to the What's Your Why? table and focus on the Partners section.

Who are the people that will collaborate with you to make this event happen? Are they friends or foes?
Who has the authority? Who really holds the power to make or break your event?
Who are your potential partners? What will it take to get them on board?

As you developed your concept and worked through the process of creating your elevator pitch, you have no doubt bounced ideas off of others and started conversations. Think about those people now in terms of the roles you will need to fill to plan and execute this event.

Event Planning Roles

Event Coordinator sees the big picture and maintains the vision of the event.
Planning Team shares the duties for developing the schedule and creating activities. The planning team may be comprised of representatives from grade levels, content areas, admin, staff, etc.
Event Volunteers perform specific duties or oversee specific activities during the event. They may or may not have been involved in planning and will often require detailed instructions or activity summaries to perform their duties. Event volunteers may also help to construct and set up spaces, gather and organize materials, and hang signage.
Teachers and Instructional Staff can serve as managers of student groups and should be thoughtfully considered. If a goal of the event is to model or demonstrate new strategies for teachers, involving them as escorts for their class through the event, creating natural opportunities for coaching and modeling.
Marketing and Communications help to spread the word, keep the teachers and school staff informed and address questions and requests for additional information. Marketing and Communications volunteers can also set up and maintain the information hub through the planning, execution and evaluation of the event.
Set up and Tear down Support helps to organize the space, coordinate materials and supplies and clean up after the event.

Your elevator pitch is the opening communication piece you will rely on. A strong elevator pitch will be the basis for creating announcements, staff email reminders, community flyers, and newsletter articles. Hone and customize your elevator pitch ask for:

Recruiting planning team members,
Requesting material and supply donations,
Engaging teachers in the schedule and event plan,
Inviting community members, experts and stakeholders to participate,
Sending “save the date” cards and issuing invitations,
And whatever else you need for your specific event

Consider form and survey apps to manage your requests and responses.

Google Forms offers a variety of question formats, gathers emails from your respondents, and will organize your results in a spreadsheet for data management and sharing results.
SignUp Genius can be used for recruiting volunteers, allowing classrooms to sign up for events, organizing donation requests from parents and community, etc. With a variety of free templates, you can easily create a professional sign up form and share it digitally with your school community.
Survey Monkey provides additional form features.
QR Codes with your survey or form link embedded allow your community to respond with their smart phone or mobile device. Considering that most school devices enable QR code use for learning activities, students and staff can use their school-issued devices to access the forms from QR codes.

Layouts and Schedules

Planning for your space is a highly specific activity. To create an effective event layout and schedule, the planning team must consider the features of the school day that cannot be altered, and plan event activities around them.

Unalterable Activities to Work Around

Student arrival and dismissal
Teacher prep time
Daily announcements

Activities to be Reimagined

Class time
"Special" classes
WIN or club periods
Lunch
Recess

Schedules

Consider the age and abilities of your participants when planning the schedule.

For in-school events, use standard class or lesson timeframes as the basis of your scheduling
For after-school events, plan in 15 or 30 minute blocks and consider what an average student family can reasonably complete in or attend to in that time frame.
Also consider how many participants can participate in an activity at one time when planning the number of activities.
- - Plan for students to work with partners.
  - Exploration centers should be completed in 5-7 minutes with maximum 4 students (2 partner groups) working at the same time.
  - Exploration centers should not be required, but can be organized into categories or sections. Set an expectation that students complete one activity in each category or section before repeating categories or sections.

- - Plan more enough centers for 120% of your student groups to be engaged at one time. If you have 15 partner groups and 2 groups can work at each station, plan at least10 centers so that some, but not all centers can have only one group working at a time, and students will have opportunities to explore different stations.
  - Plan for a relatively consistent time to explore each station, and allow that students will have the opportunity to explore about half of the stations during their exploration session (however you DO NOT need to enforce the time or the requirement that students complete a minimum number of centers)

Flexibility

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