Free Planning Tool for Teachers
Mark Burns
Award winning writer, facilitator and keynote speaker. Works with schools, colleges, MATs and LAs. Co-author of 3 best-selling books including Business Book Award winner 2019 (HR & Management) 'The Learning Imperative'.
Based upon the principles in our best-selling book, Teaching Backwards, we've produced a topic planner and it’s free to download.
The planner has been designed to be a thinking/discussion framework for teachers, to enable them to effective plan lesson sequences so that:
• Learners’ starting points are central to planning/teaching and take into account misconceptions learners hold, misremembered prior learning, and learning outside the subject or school.
• Teachers have clarity on the ingredients/thinking steps required for learners to achieve the desired outcome so that modeling and explaining is effective
• Teachers ensure learners have the same level of clarity about the learning journey and what is required to achieve excellence by the end of the sequence of lessons
• Teachers can support/challenge learners who have different starting points
• Questioning is appropriately challenging and enables teachers to get accurate feedback from learners, particularly on areas where misconceptions or mistakes are made
• Time in lessons is sharply focused on engaging learners to think hard and practise developing the knowledge, skills and understanding required
• Feedback from teachers maximizes the impact on learners’ progress
Many teachers have found that using this thinking tool has helped them to identify areas for improvement in their teaching. They've also found it useful as a discussion tool their teams to reduce the variability of teaching quality within their teams. For example, to enable comparison between different teachers' knowledge about misconceptions or thinking steps.
The Topic Planner is available to download free from our website.
http://www.malit.org.uk/teaching-backwards-topic-planner/
We’ve also provided a short video tutorial to help provide guidance on how to use the planner.
The Teaching Backwards Topic Planner is available to download as either a static or interactive PDF document. The interactive version allows teachers to key information into each box and set up hyperlinks to pre-assessment tasks, models, WAGOLL, success criteria, pre-mortems and pre-designed questions or quizzes/tests.
Award winning writer, facilitator and keynote speaker. Works with schools, colleges, MATs and LAs. Co-author of 3 best-selling books including Business Book Award winner 2019 (HR & Management) 'The Learning Imperative'.
7yI've found it leads to rich discussions between teachers about aspects of their craft which can help to narrow variance in teaching quality between different classrooms. Teachers tend to operate alone and have limited opportunities to compare/contrast their own thinking about teaching sequences of lessons with others' thinking by asking questions such as e.g. how do you model/explain that concept?
Enjoying life in a slower lane. Still learning.
7yReally useful. It builds in self reflection along the way
Senior Lecturer specializing in Festivals and Events Management and Professional Development. Interested in people and volunteer management, sustainability and early career development.
7yThank you for sharing this. I have just downloaded a copy and am about to start using it, looks really helpful :)