There are never enough planning periods for teachers. Am I right? There is so much to do. There are meetings, parent conferences, phone calls to be made, emails to check and write, lessons to plan, papers to grade, classes to cover unexpectantly, classrooms to clean, and, oh, they have to make sure they go to the bathroom. I could go on and on. There is a ton of stuff that teachers have to do that they are unable to do while they are actually teaching the rest of the day.
If you are a teacher reading this, you know that planning periods are precious time periods during the day that must be used wisely to get as much done as possible so that you will not have to take stuff home.
Over the years, I have found some time-saving tips and tricks that help make use of the time so that it’s possible to get most of the “things” done during planning periods. There is never enough time to get EVERYTHING done, but we can shoot for getting the most done!
Here are 10 things to try out during your planning periods! There are so many time-saving tips! They may leave you more time to focus on bringing the WOW Factor!
When Creating Lessons During Planning Periods
Use Pre-Made Lessons
One of the best time-saving tips is using other resources for your lessons. Teachers are amazing and creative and have the ability to make some of the “most fabulous”, engaging, and rigorous lessons for students. There are sites like TPT and Amped Up that house a ton of resources that are both free and paid that other teachers (and schools) can purchase for their classrooms.
Is everything perfect on these sites? No, but you have the professional expertise to determine what is best for your classroom. I wish more school systems would realize that, but that’s another topic for another day!
In addition to these sites, there are subscriptions for access to multiple high-quality resources that you can use in your classroom. Of course, I’m biased towards the Bright in the Middle Membership, but there are others as well.
Your school system may have some of these subscriptions. Use them!
Of course, if you have the time to create your own lessons, do it! I know you are so creative and you know what’s best for your classroom, but sometimes, there isn’t enough time to plan these elaborate lessons that our diverse classrooms need, so sometimes, it’s better to not reinvent the wheel.
Use Choice Boards
Choice boards are great for activities to follow a lesson when there is just no time to plan a great WIDEN activity.
Choice boards (like a menu of choices) give students the option of what activity they would like to do to explore a topic. Choice boards increase student engagement, allow for differentiation, and promote creativity.
They allow students to explore a topic in a fun way that THEY get to choose.
You can set up the choice board in whichever way you choose, but a table style is a common way to go.
You can give students options such as writing a poem about the topic, designing a slide presentation to teach about a topic, and drawing a doodle that represents the topic. There are so many things that students can do!
This post by Catlin Tucker gives more ideas and information about choice boards.
This type of assignment saves you a lot of time during your planning periods.
Use AI
AI is interesting. Sometimes, it’s no good, but sometimes it can be very helpful.
When planning science lessons, there are many neat things that it can do. Here are just a few things you can try when planning a lesson to save time.
Reading Passage
Have it to create a reading passage for you. For example, ask “Create a reading passage to help middle school science students learn about photosynthesis.” or “Write a reading passage to guide middle school students through the difference between physical and chemical changes.”.
Create Skits
You can also have it to create skits for your students to perform in the classroom to have a little fun! For example, ask “Create a skit for 6 middle school students to explain the 5 layers of the atmosphere.”.
Make a Quiz
Looking to create a quiz? Ask AI to come up with some questions for you. Then you can access how legit they are and use them!
Use Templates
If you have templates, use them! You may have templates for quizzes, presentations, task cards, lesson plans, and more!
If not, there are amazing ones online, and I’ll have to mention Canva here. When in Canva, type in “science worksheet template”. There are so many awesome things to customize! You can customize a classic worksheet, a science experiment, a research report, a sorting worksheet, a word search, a reading passage with questions, a coloring page, and more! You can also just use one of them! Some are more for the elementary level, but there are many that work for middle school!
Plan with A Colleague
If you are one of the lucky ones, you may work with other teachers in your building that teach the same content you do. If that’s the case, plan with them! More heads are better than one, and this can save you time during your planning periods!
Your colleague may already have some fabulous resources and ideas to help you plan and vice versa. You could help save them time.
If you don’t have anyone else in your building, there may be someone you can contact in your district or school system to plan with.
Find your people! If you cannot find anyone in your area, there is an awesome Facebook group that I’m a part of where you can ask questions and get lesson ideas. Check it out!
When Grading During Planning Periods
Grade Less
Yes, I said it! You don’t have to grade everything. I have learned that whether I grade 100 assignments per student or 30, students seem to stick around the same grade each quarter. Of course, you want to have a decent number of assignments per grading period to make it fair, but you don’t have to grade EVERYTHING!
You probably have different categories in your grading system like quizzes, tests, homework, classroom, projects, etc. Just make sure you have a few assignments for each grading category (each grading period), and it will be solid.
Some of the assignments you can grade for the gradebook, others can be participation, and others can just be solely for feedback. Just remember, the goal of the class should be to LEARN, not just to get a grade. Keep that in mind.
Record Feedback
Find a way to record your feedback with audio for your students. So many assignments are digital today, so it’s possible! It’s so much faster to speak feedback rather than to write it all down.
One cool Google Chrome Extension is Mote. It’s an extension that makes it easy to record a voice note and then pop it right in a comment in Google Slides, Google Docs and other places in the Google Workspace. It even provides the transcription if you want it in written form.
This is great for interactive lessons. You can easily sort through some slides and provide quick feedback for your students!
Automate Grading
If you can automate your grading, of course, that will save you a ton of time. There are so many different things you can do. Check with your school system/district to see what resources are available to you. With the many resources with testing banks to make quizzes, Google Forms, and other programs, there are so many choices. Use them!
Small Group Assignments
When creating assignments, create them for groups instead of individual students. This is great for many reasons including student collaboration and less grading for you! Think about an assignment like stations. You can either have ~25 papers to grade (one per student) or ~5 depending on how many groups you have.
For me, it’s a no brainer! I love it when my students work in groups for SO many reasons!
Even with activities such as this plate tectonics activity, students can work in groups and turn in one paper per group.
If you have six classes with 25-30 kids each (speaking from experience), this saves a significant amount of grading time!
Student Reflections
Remember when I said that you don’t have to grade everything. Well, here’s an option.
I’m not saying to ignore the work that students have done and throw it to the wayside. There are some options on what to do, and one of those is to allow students to do a reflection on their own assignment.
So instead of you grading the assignment, you can set a timer for about five to ten minutes. Tell students to look over their assignment and write down their own reflection on how they did. Ask them questions like: What was the significance of this assignment? How did you do? What knowledge did you gain? What would you do differently?
They can also compare their experience with a classmate.
Student reflections work good with assignments like science experiments, an art project assignment, current event summary, a presentation, a poster, etc.
Which of these ideas with you implement during your planning periods?
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