Teacher Lesson Planner

The shape of the week, on one sheet

Days down the left column. Subjects or periods across the top. Each cell is one day-by-subject slot with room for the objective, the main activity, and whatever you need to remember to get out of the cupboard beforehand.

Underneath sits a box for the week's aims, differentiation reminders, and everything that refuses to fit inside a cell. Print it on a Sunday, sketch the week in pencil, and change it on Wednesday when Wednesday goes differently.

Periods or subjects, and which you need

The column headers are free text, which is the whole flexibility of the sheet. They take Maths, English, Science as easily as P1, P2, P3, or a mix like Registration, P1, P2, Break, P3.

Secondary teachers generally want period numbers, because the subject is fixed and the class changes. Primary teachers generally want subject names, because the class is fixed and the subject changes. Same grid, opposite convention, and it is worth deciding which before you print a term's worth rather than after.

Five days by default. Drop it to four for a non-contact day, or for a week with an INSET sitting in the middle of it.

Write it so a cover teacher can use it

A weekly plan earns its keep on the morning you are not there, and a plan written purely for yourself is usually unusable by anybody else. It is full of abbreviations, it assumes you know where the resources live, and it says continue without saying from where.

Two habits fix that for almost no extra effort. Put the page or the resource in the cell rather than only the topic, so Fractions p42 instead of Fractions. And put the room and the set in the header alongside the week, because a cover teacher who cannot find the class cannot deliver any of it.

A planner that can be handed to the office at seven in the morning is worth the twenty seconds a day it costs, and you will not be in a state to write it on the day you need it.

A term in a ring binder

Print the whole term at once rather than a sheet a week. Twelve or fourteen pages, hole-punched, in date order at the front of a binder is what most teachers converge on, and it survives being carried between rooms in a way a laptop does not.

Fill in the week-of field before printing if you want the dates already there. Leave it blank and write them by hand, which is faster when the term has an awkward half-term sitting in the middle of it. The name and date fields switch off entirely for a personal planner; they exist for the copy you hand a trainee.

Keep last year's sheets. Planning the same unit again is far quicker with an annotated week in front of you, including the note about the lesson that overran.

What it deliberately will not hold

One page, one week, a few lines per cell. It is not a lesson-plan proforma and it will not carry objectives in full, differentiation notes, assessment criteria or a seating plan.

That is the design. The detail belongs in a document per lesson or per unit. What a teacher needs on the desk is the shape of the week visible at a glance: where the double period is, which afternoon has already gone to assembly, which day is carrying three practicals. Make one sheet do both jobs and you get a page too dense to read at twenty to nine in the morning.

Print this alongside a unit planner rather than instead of one, and let it be the index to it.