A teacher’s planning period can be extremely productive with the right mindset and tools. In our first post in the “No Time Wasted” series, we want to provide strategies on how to best utilize every single minute of a planning period.
Make sure to come back this summer as we waste no time during:
- planning periods (you are reading this now)
- teacher in-service
- instruction
- the first 5 minutes of class
When are you most productive?
Before I begin, it is important to evaluate your personal self. When do you feel the most productive? And does this align with your teacher planning period? If it does, you are in luck! That time will be fruitful. If it doesn’t, you may need to decide how to utilize before/after school and lunch to complete most of your tasks. (That is assuming you don’t have duties during this time.)
Unfortunately, most teachers won’t know when their planning period is until closer to the beginning of the school year. Take a moment and think back to the planning periods you have had in the past. If you are a new teacher, think about when you felt the best to tackle homework in college. Save tasks that need the most brain power (example: planning) for the times you feel the most fresh.
Build The Right Routines
You know how we use routines and procedures with students? It’s because they work! And that is what we need to do with our planning period: create routines that make our planning periods work for us like clock work. Autopiloting as much as possible will remove decision fatigue or asking the question, “Wait, did I finish x, y, z?”
Ask yourself, what can I set up now that will help me later on? For example, I had an opening routine for when I arrived at school and a closing routine for when I left school. When I walked into my classroom each morning, I double checked my planner for the day to see what I had going on that day, reviewed my lesson plan, and checked my email. Once that was complete, I would go get a second cup of coffee as my little treat. My closing routine was similar – update my objective board, enter points into our schoolwide reward system, check email, and then leave.
My teacher planning period routine was a little less regimented. Planning periods can fill up with meetings, coverage, or fire drills, so flexibility was required. However, I did take advantage of batch processing by saving all similar tasks to be done on the same day.
- Monday – Grading and Entering Grades (grades were due each Tuesday)
- Tuesday – Lesson Planning for the following week (Every other Tuesday I had a math content team meeting, so I had to work around this time and sometimes finish up the next day.)
- Wednesday – Make Copies for the following week (Make answer keys as copies were being made)
- Thursday – Communication, Grade Level duties
- Friday – Catch Up/Flex Day
That flex day each week was usually very full by the time Friday rolled around, but by making a general outline of how my week would go, I could problem solve if something did come up.
What area of your work time can benefit from the right routine? Here are some other ideas for routines to get you thinking:
- Only checking and responding to email at a designated time once a day
- Creating a few templates around emails in a Google doc, so you aren’t starting emails from scratch
- Set a timer to keep you on task
- Only grading work done in class and utilizing technology to grade as much of it as possible
- Remove searching for documents by linking student handout, homework, and assessments inside your lesson plan
Make a Plan and Work Your Plan
Picture this: it’s 7:00 am on Monday. You arrive at school. There are 60 things you need to do and you aren’t sure where to start. You head to the copier only to see that it is already in use. You head back to your classroom and get busy on another task. Something is nagging in your brain. What did you forget? Oops – you were supposed to be on morning duty.
Have a weekly meeting with yourself. My principal would send out a weekly email on Sunday night with all the reminders of what was going on at school that week. After I read that email, I would transfer any relevant information to my weekly planner and check my digital calendar for meetings that I would also add to my weekly planner. If you think it, ink it (brilliant quote from Laura Stack’s blog).
I do not have the capacity to remember everything.
When you have a clear picture of what needs to get done and what time you have left to do it, you can better plan your tasks like planning, prepping, and grading.
Eliminate Distractions and Time Wasters
If you don’t want to waste a single minute, then remove distractions. For me, that means I would silence my phone and put it out of reach. It also means that I would close my classroom door when I really needed to buckle down. I could not afford the brain space it required to stop a task, chat with a coworker, and then reorient myself to get back to that task. It wasn’t worth the little bit of social interaction. However, some teachers really value adult interactions, and it may be a necessity for them in order for them to get through the day!
Distractions are pretty personal! I would ask yourself, “Is what I am doing going to benefit my students’ and myself by the end of the day?”
Some time wasters are a little less obvious. You hop onto Pinterest to search for an activity, but before you know it 10 minutes have passed and you are still scrolling. If you are reading this blog post and you are supposed to be doing something else, please bookmark this post and X out.
This is why I love our All Access subscription. It takes the guesswork out of finding an engaging and aligned activity for the next day. Our new platform makes it so easy to search activities by standard! Check it out here!
Make a Personal Goal for Your Time
The year I had my baby was the year that my time became incredibly precious. Now my goal to leave school at 4:00 pm wasn’t just a goal, it was my highest priority! I wasn’t going to leave anything that I needed to get done for tomorrow until after school. My planning period’s main objective was to accomplish what was needed for tomorrow’s lesson before I got to anything else. Ideally, I was always about a week ahead with planning and copies, but were task cards cut and grouped? Were my scavenger hunt stations stapled around the room? Were my answer keys completed in full detail? That needed to be done.
In fact, I made my grade level team and math department head aware of my 4:00 pm end time. If someone needed to talk to me about something, they would need to do it before 4:00 pm.
Your goal may be around not bringing work home or turning off email or work chat notifications on your phone. Setting some boundaries for your time will make you a happier teacher.
What are some ways you use your teacher planning period time efficiently?
We have written on this topic quite a few times, so if this post was helpful, be sure to take a look at these other posts:
- Teacher Planner Printables (freebie included!)
- Time Saving Tips for Your Planning Period
- Time Management for Teachers
- Time Saving Tips for the New Year
