Long Term Planning

I’m sure I’m not the only teacher who has experienced this, especially with this huge shift in education over the past few years.  The last district I worked for came to all the K-2 teachers and said something along the lines of “So we’re switching to Common Core, but we’re not sure how to do it.  Since you’re not testing grades you’re going to do it.  We’ll come back together and see who sunk and who swam, then we’ll do what the swimmers did.”  Thus began the dog paddle/treading water that was figuring out how to switch to Common Core Standards in the middle of the year.  THANKFULLY, I was working with an absolute genius of a long term planner, who taught me everything I know.  Check out her TpT store here:

Tiffany Teaches

Here’s the Dream Team the day that Rumble came to surprise her at school because she’s that cool.

Anyways, here’s what she taught me about long term planning:

  

   1.     Spreadsheets are your friend. 

   2.   Know your standards.

   3.   Start broad, with your standards.  Once you have all your standards planned into your schedule, then you can go back and get more detailed with the actual resources you’ll be using. 

   4.   Plan review weeks into your quarters and semesters.  These will save your sanity.

Good thing I paid attention to Tiffany and her organized ways.  Here’s how I put it into practice, starting from scratch, in kindergarten.

   1.     Spreadsheets are my friend.  Everything else kind of builds off of this. Make a spreadsheet for everything.  It will help you stay organized in the mayhem of planning.

   2.   Know your standards.  I had to work off of Common Core Standards, Colorado State Standards, and an additional set of district standards).  I sat down with lists of all the standards and compiled them in a single set of spreadsheets, because they are my friend.

 

3 and 4.  Start broad, then plan more details.  I made a spreadsheet with a set of rows for each week (one row for each content standard).  It’s easier to go a quarter or semester at a time if you’re just starting out.  Include:

·      Dates

·      Standard Numbers (for all content areas)

·      Standard Wording (for all content areas)

·      Unit/Theme/Project

Then this is where your weekly plans come into play.

And most importantly…finish it with a glass of wine because you just finished an INSANE amount of tough work.  Celebrate it!!!