What is weekly planning?
In its simplest form, weekly planning is a working document that shows what a teacher is planning to teach over the period of a week. Typically, a weekly plan is constructed after long-term and medium-term plans have been completed. It’s these plans which will normally outline the bigger picture of what the children will be learning, but in a weekly plan, teachers will drill down into more detail, usually showing specific activities and objectives for your class or classes during the week.
Planning, planning and more planning
From experience, I know as teachers we must balance a multitude of plates at one time. From knowing in advance what needs to be taught, planning it, teaching it, assessing each child, making sure they’re on track, making sure they understand, changing the direction of the intended plan, and splitting the plan for differentiated groups, all the while making sure you are looking into the future to make sure that you’re also on track with your plan! It’s a headache for anyone in the profession, and the worst part, teachers are already incredibly time-poor!
Help is available!
Here at Cornerstones, we decided it was time for a change. Drawing from my own experiences, that of my colleagues, and feedback from hundreds of schools, we have developed a timetable planning tool within Maestro, to help ease a lot of that pressure and give back time to teachers.
What do you need in your weekly timetable?
✓ A simple drag and drop of your pre-planned lessons, with quick links to resources
✓ Option to add in your own ad-hoc lessons and add learning objectives
✓ A quick view of your colleagues’ week and what they have planned
✓ Ability to add your own events, like a school trip
✓ See whole school events at a glance, such as assemblies and registration
✓ A quick ‘taught’ button, to track attainment and coverage for the whole class or learning groups
✓ A handy note box to add any lesson-specific details, such as groupings
