Big-picture lesson planning
Long-term planning involves creating a big-picture map of your learning goals. It maps out the areas of the curriculum you are going to teach to and the timeframe within which you will deliver this in the classroom. Anyone looking at your plan should immediately be able to see what your specific goals are, the areas of the curriculum each goal maps to and in which weeks you are going to deliver the related lessons.
Schools generally approach this task in one of two ways. Some set the goals at a school level, which your teaching plans need to identify and show how what you are delivering from the curriculum relates to them. Other schools enable teachers to set their own goals but need to see very clearly how what you are planning to deliver supports those goals. You can take either approach with iUgo and use it as an individual, team or manager, or any combination of these.
“When I started using iUgo, it brought all of my planning together in a manageable, realistic and measurable way, which has helped me beyond anything else. You know you have covered everything, but it’s so quick and easy.”
Pip Overton, Teacher
“iUgo provides the structure and prompts to guide you into better planning.”
Anne Maree McDougall, Deputy Principal
Why you need a long-term teaching plan
Teachers tell us they love using iUgo for long-term planning for two main reasons.
- It helps ground you. You have a crystal-clear link between your goals and what you are teaching in the classroom. With that high-level view, you can look across the term(s) and year with real focus and certainty of success.
- It provides much-needed evidence that what you have in your plan will deliver the desired outcomes – and in this way helps you to meet a best-practice requirement.
Also remember that long-term planning goes beyond the core subjects: it should span co-curriculum subjects as well. It is also about creating a timeline of what you will be teaching when, ensuring you’ve allowed adequate time to deliver the proposed lesson plans.
It’s hard making it easy
One of the most difficult challenges we’ve faced at iUgo is how to make this complex process easy. To achieve that, we’ve created a three-step building block system that works within a prepared framework. It means you aren’t wasting time creating the timeline or requirements – you can just go straight to creating your plan.
After identifying your goals and the related subjects, you:
- Create the cell, label it with the curriculum area and detail your goals – eg, Literacy Subjects.
- Select the timeframe you want to teach this over – eg, 8 weeks.
- Insert the block that is created into the relevant weeks on your plan – eg, weeks 2–9 of Term 2.
Changing your plan is as simple as shifting the blocks. You can share your plan with others, knowing iUgo will maintain its integrity and keep the data secure. If you wish, you can create an easy-to-read pdf or printed paper copy. That makes getting feedback and sign-off incredibly quick and easy.
“iUgo is well organised and everything is just there. It’s a lot easier without giant folders and scribbled out notes.”
Kahla Topia, Deputy Principal
“iUgo saves a lot of time on things that used to take a lot of time. Google can crash and time is really precious when you’re in the thick of it.”
Wayne Widdowson, Teacher
Best of all, it is super easy to make adjustments if your world changes (as it frequently has over the past few years). You can change your plan around or introduce alternative subjects in no time.
Next – creating a detailed lesson plan
Having created your overview, the next step is to drill down into your plan delivery, creating detailed lesson plans that are curriculum compliant. iUgo makes this super simple too. We share how to do this in our next blog – coming soon.
Don’t want to miss out? Subscribe now to get blogs and other updates from iUgo.
Check out the other blogs in this series:
