Fitting lessons into your planner

We understand that sometimes schools have restricted timetables and can find it difficult to fit in all the content within a project. We'd strongly advise speaking to a Curriculum Adviser (Book training | Maestro) to discuss your current curriculum coverage and projects that you have planned. 

It's important to understand the sequence and coverage of lessons, as it will help you to work out how they might fit into your timetable. We advise that teachers read through all the projects they are planning to teach for a term in advance to help them understand the lesson sequence and connections between the projects, so that they can make a more informed choice in choosing which lessons may need to be omitted.

Some tips for planning the projects:

1. Check coverage of the Programmes of Study (PoS) to see where they may be covered more than once.
   You can use the Intended coverage to look at the specific lessons that cover each PoS (find out more about checking and analysing coverage). Where a PoS is covered multiple times, you could exclude lessons, provided that you don't affect the narrative of the project, or lose learning that may be built on at a later point in the year.
   
   
2. Adapt the projects to follow a specific focus or strand throughout a subject.
   While it is statutory to cover the programmes of study, you may choose to focus on a specific strand within those topics. For example, in History, you may choose to look at invasions and resistance across the Stone Age, Iron Age, Roman Empire, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Scots, and within your own local history. Another example might be to focus on technology, art and culture. This means that the projects can be slimmed down to focus on the chosen strand(s) you want to teach in your school.
   
   
3. Change the way you record the outcomes of a project.
   Our projects include one way to record the outcomes, such as a recording sheet or quiz, but you don't have to use the suggested activity. You could find other ways to find out whether the children have got the knowledge, such as using resources in school (mini whiteboards, flash cards), physical or verbal performance (drama), etc.
   
   
4. Look for lessons with similar objectives.
   If lessons have a similar objective, you could combine the activities and add the extra skills to a single lesson. Once you've dragged and dropped the lesson onto My Planner, you can edit the event by clicking it. In the pop-up box, you can add teaching notes and choose additional objectives for the lesson by clicking the 'Add skills/knowledge' button.
   
   
5. Look for lessons labelled Breadth and Depth.
   In our sequenced projects, there are lessons labelled breadth and depth. These lessons expand and deepen children's knowledge and skills and sometimes provide cross-curricular opportunities, but will not affect the sequence of learning or coverage of the national curriculum programmes of study if they are removed. Read more: Checking and analysing coverage.
   
   
6. Get creative with your timetable!
   Schools often follow the same timetable each week and have set blocks of time to teach a specific subject. Not all our lessons take the same amount of time, and it could be that you cover two or three smaller lessons in one go (for example, in the Innovate stage). Using My Plannerto plan your lessons helps to visualise how much time the lessons take.
   
   
7. As a last resort, cut the lesson, but teach the core knowledge.
   If you have no other option but to skip one of the lessons in the sequence, teach the core knowledge in a quick 5-10 minutes before the next activity. 

If you need further guidance, you can book a meeting with one of our expert curriculum advisers here: Book training | Maestro

Remember: You can shorten or lengthen the lesson in My Planner by clicking and dragging the bottom edge of the lesson to change the size of the box.

Important: It is important to note here that if any lessons are removed, as well as checking coverage, the overall narrative of the teaching and learning should be checked. 

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