Long Range Planning

This week we discussed something that I was eagerly anticipating... long range planning!  I would be lying if I said that the idea of planning a whole year isn’t daunting and a bit terrifying but this class helped me to relax a little bit.  Something that I took out of this class that is really beneficial for me, is the idea of breaking down the year.  Instead of thinking of planning an entire year and every single lesson, think of the bones of the year.  For this blog post I want to discuss some of my personal ideas on the long range planning and what I plan to do when I get my first teaching position. 

Well first off I would want to know which grade I would be teaching and then dive into the curriculums and make sure that I know what I need to be teaching these students.  Next I would want to look at the breakdown for the school schedule (i.e. how long are the school days, holidays, in-service days, etc).  If a schedule is already set into stone for the entire school I would work off of that, or I would create a schedule for my class individually.  When creating my individual schedule I would have to check the Manitoba time allotments for all of the subjects to make sure that my students are receiving the proper amount of time for each of the subject areas. 

After I had these preliminary steps laid out, I would then start to build up my themes for the year (starting in September).  We discussed in class how units and themes can be interchangeable when planning, but I just prefer to do the themes first.  After the themes are in place for the year, I would start to develop my unit plans for all the subjects.  I would then make sketches of the lessons within each unit and cross reference them with the curriculum objectives to make sure that everything falls in line.  During this whole planning process I would like to be networking with other teachers for great ideas and also searching the web for lesson plans and ideas that will make my life easier. 

I really believe that if I follow these steps and do thorough long range planning that my life will be much easier.  I already know that teaching will be stressful but this will allow me to have plans in place and then be flexible within these plans!