Teachers plan the “How” not the “What”.
Planning is an unfortunate fact of life carried out by all except the lucky few. Even Comics apparent randomness has to be planned to be successful.
The final result is the important point. It does not matter how events are planned provided the End Goal is successfully achieved.
Planning is all about organising events in the future, so the unexpected must be expected. Good planning is about flexibility and defining the End Goal.
Teachers, being clever people, have taken Planning to such extremes in their “Lesson Plans” that the End Goal is now longer important. They have become so obsessive about the Process that Planning has become the master and the End Goal is now the servant. It gets worse.
It is impossible to write your Lesson Plans at school, so home we go. We teach 38 weeks a year giving 25 lessons per week. If you never repeated a lesson, you would have to write 950 “Lesson Plan“ That’s equivalent to 100 days work.
Having written them, you would think you would be able to use them for years to come. The consensus is that Lesson Plans have a life expectancy of two years before the clever Government Officials move the goal Posts.
My subject is Design Technology. We are lucky in that we work on a four module system with two half years so we only have to write about 120 “Lesson Plans” but that still requires 20 days work. In Industry you would have to cost this as non productive time. The cost to the department of 8 teachers is £24,000. That’s nationally £75 Million just to write Lesson Plans for Design Technology.
Forget Vocational courses, who is going to write their “Lesson Plans” not me. I’m out, I work on supply now. In 10 years teaching, the syllabus and all the “Initiatives” have changed so often is not worth the agro. Plus it is not safe to teach in a workshop because of the breakdown of discipline. Grading is now Level 4a, 4b, 4c not just 4. Is 4a higher or lower than 4C? You would be surprised.
It still gets worse.
I visited one school. Each teacher had a large Ring Binder with one page for each day of the year (190). The page was divided into three each side. They had to write a shortened version of their “Lesson Plan” for each lesson of the day. Just Think about it. This heavy Ring Binder was only open on one page each day, every other page was redundant. They still had to carry their own diaries.
What’s on a “Lesson Plan”?
Here is a typical list of just the headings.
Date. Subject. Period. Class. No of boys. No of Girls. Topic, Standards. Learning objectives. Learning outcome. Previous lesson. Repeat Lesson. Lesson plan – Starter. Lesson plan – Main Activity. Lesson plan – Plenary. Key Words Resources. Risk Assessment. Differentiation (Extension, foundation and use of IEP’s). Planned use of LSA support. Assessment opportunities. Homework. Evaluation/Next lesson. Extra curricular links.
All on one side of A4. The headings take up 20% of the space!
As a parent, we want to know what GCSE coursework has been set and when are the deadlines. Simple you might think. I have only found one school out of the 40+ I have been to who even make an attempt. Can anybody give me a logical reason why it can’t be done? Teachers planned coursework their last year, only the title of the pieces alters. Design Technology coursework is standardised so there is no excuse.
Yes, there are simple alternatives.
One school had a simple form on which you gave a brief description of what you actually taught, homework set and any problems/ideas for next time. One for each class. The Head checked them four times a year. You still had to plan what you did, but to a level of your experience and necessity. No photocopying a page out of the Health & Safety manual each time you used scissors.
The best method I have ever used was in a very large school where there were four Resistant Material teachers working at the same time. The Head of Department had to make certain that we all ended up teaching the same things. Logical.
When I walk into the school on the first day, he presented me with a folder of a student’s design work to show exactly what he want the students to produce and the quality he expected. He gave me an example of their practical work and boxes of all handouts and materials for the year. We had one assessment sheet broken up into sixteen topics. We had to grade in blocks of four topics and their aggregate mark went into their personal diaries. As a Form Tutor, I used this information when monitoring their whole school performance four times a year. (two pupils each Thursday am).
As a Teacher it was up to me how I achieved the end result on time. I still planned my work but on one piece of paper.
Combining the two methods would make sense. A record of what actually happened must improve future work. In one school I taught the same topic ten times in the year. I think I got complacent by the end.