Weekly Timetable for My Play-based Classroom
You might think I’m crazy but I like to do my weekly planning on a Friday night.
The past school week is still fresh in my mind so if I missed a lesson, need to revise or move to the next lesson – it’s easy to plan while the past week is still buzzing around in my head. Planning on a Friday night also helps me to free up some of the weekend without the upcoming week looming in the back of my mind.
I often spend a little time on Saturday or Sunday making any resources I need and packing any provocation materials I might need for the week ahead. My whole week is prepped and ready to go for Monday morning.
I love to plan digitally.
I print my weekly plan at school on Monday and it sits on my desk all week. I can quickly peruse what I have coming up the next day before I head off home and if need be, I have the digital version at home on my computer to refer to.
You can download a fully editable timetable for both Prep/Foundation and Year One from my Free Resource Library HERE.
These downloads are Microsoft Word documents and are my real timetables from Week 4, Term 1.
Download EDITABLE planning timetables for Prep or Year One
Feel free to edit them and use them for your own planning – whether you incorporate play into your day or not – digital timetables are definitely the way to go.
I save all my timetables and the following year I can refer back to them to jog my memory on successful lessons and engaging provocations. I really don’t find I actually do that very often. I guess each cohort is different, with different needs so lessons and provocations change each year.
How to write a Term Menu and a Statement of Intent in my Free Resource Library
I don’t always fit everything I have planned into our week but that’s easily fixed. I just leave those lessons in the timetable just as they are. We can catch-up the following week.
I usually do the same subjects at the same time on the same day every week. The children like the predictable routine and it makes planning quicker too. I only need to change a few details and the next week is ready to go.
Once I have my timetable sorted the way I like, my weekly Friday night planning doesn’t really take that long. I copy and paste from my OneNote and from our Statement of Intent (SOI). How to write a SOI is another download in my Free Resource Library. It’s an outline of our fortnightly explicit lessons and our Investigation setups.
Check out my timetable to see how I fit 45 minutes of Investigation time into every school day.
My free timetable download also demonstrates how I integrate the curriculum into the provocations we provide to the children during Investigation time.
If you are interested in my planning process, you might be interested in a couple of other blog posts I have:
Planning For the First Week of School
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