Long-term Planning

Teacher planning skills are among the most significant in managing learning. In the learning process planning the teacher should take into account both the standard and programme of the subject, the existing abilities and needs of the students, and the available means and time of study, as well as the priorities put forward by the school. At the same time, the student's performance must be seen by the teacher, guided every lesson, and over several years.

In the following sections a variety of planning models and approaches are offered that teachers can use when planning a school year, semester, topic, and lesson.

One of the most recognised approach in learning planning is ADDIE (analysis, planning, development, implementation, evaluation) model. It is a 5-stage model that can be used for both short-term and long-term planning. In this model, it is important that planning is only one of the phases, thereby emphasizing the principles of implementation and the analysis to be carried out before the planning itself, as well as the assessment (otherwise referred to as reflection) to be carried out at all stages.

  • 1st stage - analyze. Prepare for planning by clarifying the standard, curriculum, school targets, students' past experience on the subject, time and resource constraints.

  • 2nd stage - plan. Define learning objectives, how to evaluate them and the process of how to achieve them. Plan in three levels - the school year (thematic plan; each topic (subject plan); each lesson (lesson plan).

  • 3rd stage - develop. Choose and/or prepare the required resources for the learning process, including equipment and technical resources. For example, you may need visual aids/hand out materials/ texts for students/tasks and assignments/ quizzes/rubrics, teacher notes, technical equipment.

  • 4th stage - implement. Carry out your plan with students, make observations about the learning process and student progress, make the necessary changes.

  • 5th stage - evaluate. Evaluate plans, materials, the learning process and results, and draw conclusions for the further work.

Planning the learning content

When planning the learning content, the teacher's task is to use the learning objectives established by the government for the particular class.

In long-term planning - a topic, semester or a school year - the backwards planning, described by Grant Wiggins in his book in 1998 model, is still current.

Similarly to planning lessons as part of a topic, semester or school year, the teacher starts with the learning goal and learning objective - what do I want my students to know and be able to do at the end of this topic/semester/year? After that, we need to think how the teacher will assess the performance of the students against the learning objectives - which students’ actions will prove that the learning objective has been achieved and what the criteria will be so that the teacher and the student will be able to assess the result.

Temata plānošana

Backwards planning allows the teacher to offer the students the learning objectives to keep track of when starting a new subject (topic) and during the learning. The learning objectives are those that are checked in the final assessment work. We offer a template to plan a topic by using backwards planning.

PLANNING THE TOPIC

Learning objective (LO) for the student. Intended to achieve within one lesson or block lesson, complies with the principles - reliable, relevant, measurable, meaningful. The learning objective is statements about what the teacher wants (expects) from students as a result after the lesson!

Criteria for the LO - how the student and teacher will be able to know that the student has achieved the lesson’s LO, in what quality, which criteria will prove it? The criteria help to implement the formative assessment at every lesson, because the student knows how he/she will be evaluated and can assess himself/herself. It is also easier to plan a feedback if there are criteria, as they indicate what this feedback should be.

Tasks to check LO - tasks that the teacher should give to the student so that he/she can demonstrate how well he/she has achieved the LO. A task or several help both the student and the teacher to practice and note what is achieved of the learning objective and what is still to be acquired.

*Tasks that will help to achieve. Any other tasks which will be offered to students in the lesson that will help to achieve the learning objective or practice. These will be all the tasks for actualisation, for example. This part is optionion. However, if it is filled in, it might be easier for the teacher himself/herself to understand what is the most important in the lesson

Planning to teach a specific skill, attitude

Competency-based approach in education means that the student is not only knowledgeable but also skilled and able to apply the acquired knowledge. The teacher should teach both the subject-specific skills (e.g. in science, the ability to measure, record data) and general-thinking, collaborative, communication skills, such as the ability to use different types of information, the ability to present the results of his/her work.

The teacher chooses which skills to teach and practice during the course of the year by determining the specific class’s needs, the school target, the specific nature of the subject, etc. The teacher needs to carry out an evaluation process - what exactly do my students need to do so that they can achieve objectives within my subject and in general?

Students acquire a certain skill more effectively if the skills are exercised regularly in different contexts, so it is worth working with other subjects' teachers to plan the teaching of skills.

In joint planning on how to teach students a particular skill the previously mentioned API3 model helps:

  1. ANALYSE - Do a study of the situation - what fundamental skills our students lack? (or - what skill we want our students to have - school vision, targets, etc.) What shows that? What data is available to us to show that students lack these skills? Formulate a skill! Rethink what knowledge and more “sub-skills” need to be developed so that you can say that this skill has been learned! Write down those “sub-skills” that students should already have – it would be important to make sure that the students have them!

  2. PLAN - Split the skill into sub-skills. Most often complex skill consists of several smaller skills - put the skill in the order of learning it. Plan - whether and how it will be possible to make sure students are learning the skill! Consider how learning skills will be divided in lessons? Which teacher will teach that skill, which teacher will lead the practice for this skill? Divide each teacher’s actions into a timeline.

  3. DEVELOP - Each teacher develops skill teaching materials within their subject. For example, diagnostic work, examples to demonstrate to students showcasing how good skills look like, specific tasks that will offer to exercise the skills, assess their performance against the learning objective - skill. For evaluating a skill, it is useful when teachers develop a common assessment rubric of skill that can be used in different subjects.

  4. IMPLEMENT - Define skill as the learning objective within the teacher’s own subject in a way that students understand it. Inform students that this skill is going to be acquired together with other teachers, why this skill is meaningful, offer tasks, examples and so on.

  5. EVALUATE - Evaluation or reflection on student progress and the developed plan for teaching skills takes place throughout the process. Teachers adapt the plan and actions to achieve the target more effectively. At the end of teaching, teachers offer students a repeat diagnostic job to track the quality of skills. It's worth informing students about the results, discussing - it's their job, their skills! All that has been relevant in the process can be evaluated: student results, teacher cooperation, the developed plan, implementation, materials developed, etc. In the course of the evaluation, it is also important to celebrate “small victories” in order to see the benefits of the process, cooperation, and teachers would be prepared to work together again on the teaching of another skill.

Here is an example from a school where teachers worked together to develop class 7 students skills of processing the information given in the text. The plan is designed for one semester, indicating what each teacher will do in his/her subjects during that month. [The example is taken from materials of the Interbranch Education Innovation Centre of the University of Latvia].

The teacher's profession standard describes the very many and different skills the teacher needs. Each of these skill groups presents an opportunity to set pedagogical skill target and plan its implementation. The need for growth can be identified by the teacher himself/herself by analysing his/her teaching practices according to a variety of job-descriptive criteria, by making systematic records of practice, or by inviting colleagues, methodicals in lessons and seeking feedback on specific issues.

Here is an example of a description of the performance levels from the standard of teaching in Australia that a teacher can use to carry out self-assessment and to set targets.

[Kolektīvā monogrāfija "Mācīšanās lietpratībai"; available here]