Long Range Planning

Long range planning is a very important part of teaching. Before this class I had no idea where to start or how important a long range plan is. In this class we discussed how it is a plan that you will hand into your principal at the beginning of the year and for the teacher it will be a road map of the whole year. The big question is where do you start? After having this class discussion I have found the importance of checking the school calendar and seeing how many actual teaching days you have. After you have figured this out you can go through and decide what themes you want to do and when. I think that this will really help you set up your outline of the units that you need to run because there are going to be some units that fit better in certain themes, or during certain times of the year. For example, a unit on soils would likely fit better in the spring or in the fall when there is no snow on the ground. However, I think that for Math and English I will constantly be rotating the outcomes for each curriculum throughout the whole year. One suggestion that was made was to use a calendar and pencil in the themes and activities you know you will want to do for each theme/unit. This calendar allows you to think about how much you can realistically do and what your priorities are.

I also was not aware before this discussion that there was a set amount of time for each class. I knew that you had to teach English Language Arts the most, then Math but I was not aware that it worked out to be 35% and 15% of the time. I really liked this structure and making a daily schedule makes a lot more sense to me after seeing this information. Also, this schedule tells how you have to fit Art, Science and Social Studies into your schedules and how you don't have to have these everyday, but you have to have a rotation with these courses so that you do get the allotted time in if you are not teaching them daily.   

I knew that you had a to do a year plan at the beginning of each school year and this sounded a little overwhelming to me. After discussing this in more detail I feel quite a bit more relaxed about this. I think that by planning the whole year like this I will be able to do a better job of planning each unit and I will be more relaxed to do so. Also, during our class Jackie mentioned that if you have a year long plan then you can look for supplies for your themes and units in the off season so that you can get them cheaper. I love being cheap so this sounds good to me! I think that there are many benefits to long range planning and I do think that by doing a good job on your long range plan you will save yourself time throughout the school year.