TM4T Techniques 2.1.6 - Planning - Practical Planning

English secondary schools are the spiritual home of mental planning. Trainee teachers and NQTs are expected to write down lesson plans, but their mentors and betters practice a subtler art. They demonstrate their own techniques by enigmatically tapping their foreheads: it is all in here, this is where the plans reside. A similar approach frequently extends beyond lesson planning to all other aspects of the curriculum. Everything is considered carefully and planned in detail, but nevery actually written down. This is fine, as long as - at some stage - the trainee is shown something of what is involved in 'mental planning'.

This example shows how to plan a small piece of work - a written assessment. You may feel that this is an unusual example, but we have chosen it for a reason: to emphasize that 'planning' is not just associated with lesson-planning, and it is not solely used for large projects.

There are actually two things going on here; two threads which run through every actvivity a teacher is likely to plan. The first is a creative flow: the evolution of an idea, through a process of design and development, towards its realisation. The second is purely mechanical, a repetitive routine aimed at ensuring reliability of results. In TM4T we are going to focus on the second aspect.

Step 1: Write down precisely what you are trying to achieve.

This is easier to illustrate by example than to explain in abstract terms: 'Produce a new assessment 3 for BTEC Level 2 Travel and Tourism'. This step defines the scope of what you are going to do. You will notice that we have immediately sacrificed the purity of 'mental planning' - this is because writing down what you are going to achieve has psychological benefits which outweigh efficiency.

What we are trying to ensure is that we embark on pieces of work which have a beginning and an end. We don't drift off into an ill-defined activity which involves 'looking at doing something to improve Y11 assessments' or 'seeing if the BTEC material might be made a bit more interesting'. We start with a clear bite-sized chunk of work. We also guesstimate how much work is actually involved - the planning effort should clearly be proportionate to the task we're planning: its size, complexity and importance. In this hypothetical example, we'll assume that the BTEC assessment requires 1-2 hours work to prepare.

You might sensibly snort at this example:'hah! that statement of scope's not very clear, or comprehensive, is it?'. The point here is that you are planning your own work. Nobody else needs to understand it. As long as you know the difference between assessment 2 and assessment 3 and know where to find the specifications of BTEC courses, a terse (ie exact and accurate) definition of scope is absolutely fine.

Step 2: Write down a list of deliverables.

This step is where inexperienced planners frequently go wrong. It is very easy to mix up steps 1 and 2, and simply write down 'assessment for BTEC' as your scope and your deliverable too. Here is an example of what you might write:

30 x worksheets

Answer sheet for short questions

Specimen answer for long question

Mark sheet (with grade boundaries)

Student instructions (PowerPoint slide)

You will notice that these are physical end-products of the activity you are planning. This does not mean that more abstract aspects - for example tailoring the assessment to the learning preferences of your students - are ignored. It does mean that that clarity of deliverable comes first, and that it is important to get this right at the outset. We do this so that nothing important gets forgotten, and so that we do not underestimate how much time and work is involved.

Step 3: Develop an outline plan

This represents the creative element of the process. You should simply generate - using a magic wand and other teacherly tools - an idea, and mentally sketch out what will be required to realise that idea. This step is typically done well by virtually all teachers, who might scribble something in their planners like this:

photo - typical family?

local town as destination

short questions: similar to book

long question: development of facilities

Again, you may reasonably point out that this is unintelligible to the average human being, and again this is absolutely right. Again, the point is that planning is much more complicated if you are planning the work of others, or if others need to review and approve your plans. If you are planning your own work, you need only write down enough for your own understanding.

You should note that the 'outline plan' doesn't really qualify as a plan at all. It really isn't much more than a set of ideas.

The forehead-tapping mentor, of course, may not need to write anything down. A sensible teacher, however, will get into the habit of doing so.

Step 4: Write down what resources you need

This step is similar to Step 1, insofar that it involves writing down what you already know, and spending just a little time mentally checking that you haven't forgotten something. This step differs from Step 1, insofar that you can omit the glaringly obvious. A sensible list might include:

Downloaded photo of typical family

Specification for BTEC Level 2 Travel & Tourism (for grade criteria)

Someone to review and sanity-check my draft work

Mentally, of course, you will tick off the other standard resources you will need: laptop, photocopier, paper, etc. The point here is that if there is anything you might forget (for example, the specification), write it down. Of course, in practice, you will not write things down as neatly or fully as shown above. Your notepad will probably look like this:

Resources: photo, spec; ask Mary to review.

Step 5: Plan

You should now mentally sketch out how you intend to approach the task. If you are tackling a task for the first time, it would be sensible to jot this down in your notebad rather than internalise it entirely. Your approach might look something like this (though your jottings might be briefer):

copy spec to memory stick

download photo from Google images

produce draft worksheet questions

leave draft overnight

review & revise worksheet

produce answer sheet & marksheet

get Mary to review and OK the assessment

revise if necessary

do specimen answer to long question

produce student instructions

review everything

photocopy worksheets

give assessment & mark

review and revise

This example is intended to show that at this stage you should be seeking a pretty detailed picture (mental or otherwise) of exactly what you are going to do. The example is obviously hypothetical - the extent of your reviewing and revising will clearly depend on your experience. The final step, however - reviewing whether the whole process worked - should be a routine part of how you work.

Now, here is the thing: You do not need to use any specialised tools to generate Gantt charts or draw dependencies, or do any of the clever things that people learn in project management courses. You should NOT seek to produce anything like this:

It is, in fact, counter-productive to produce a separate plan, because this work needs to be integrated with the other 1001 things we need to do.

What you need to do is to guesstimate how much work is involved, and decide how to schedule that work. You don't need to write down anything like the following table - this simply summarises what you should do. An explanation of the numbered steps follows the table.

The first thing to note is that you do not have to tackle the tasks in order. As you can see, Tasks 1 & 7 are very small - they can be done immediately.

Other small tasks (Tasks 2, 10, 12) are jotted down on the Ticklist. Task 2 will be done as part of Ticks-and-Twos at the end of the day; Task 10 will coincidentally be done in Tens, and the photocopying will be batched up with other copying work at the end of the week.

The bulk of the work (Tasks 3, 5, 6, 9 and 11) is scheduled on the Weekly Plan. What this means is that you should choose carefully when and where the work is done. If you feel a task needs creativity, choose to do it at your creative-best-time. If it needs concentration, choose to do it in your quiet place.

Tasks which are relatively distant in the future (ie outside this-week) should be recorded on your Yearly Plan. Note that there is no relationship between the size of the task and which plan it goes on - five minute tasks can go on the Yearly Plan just as easily as on the Tickist; momentous events can go on the Weekly Plan just as easily as they can go on the Yearly Plan.

The most important point here is that in order to plan effectively - and efficiently - you need to have tools and methods already in place. If you are following the TM4T method, these are as follows:

1. The Ticklist - this is reviewed every day, and small tasks get done immediately

2. Tens - this represents a timeslot - often a PPA lesson - dedicated to small-medium sized non-teaching tasks (averaging 10 minutes each) Typically and ideally these happen twice a week.

3. A Weekly Plan - this is an extended timetable, including any pre-school, lunch, evening, weekend slots which you have decided to use for work or kind-of-work. This is effectively used as diary of things to do later in the week. The Weekly Plan should be started off each week by copying stuff from the Yearly Plan.

4. A Yearly Plan - a calendar of events, tasks, important dates, based on your school calendar, ideally in spreadsheet format.