How to plan out a Medium Term Plan
I recently did a live training on how to effectively create a MTP and I wanted to share with you guys!
Here is the video, the transcript of the video is underneath. Please let me know if you have any questions!
To get help with your planning and resources check out these free resources
Today, we're going to be looking at effective lesson planning. I'm going to really talk you through how to plan your units which will lead to how to plan your individual lessons, I'm going to focus mainly on English, although these techniques can be used for any subject.
I've been teaching for over 10 years now and I am always surprised that new teachers aren't taught this, they aren't taught how to properly plan, which is a really, really important skill. And it's something that we need to be giving our teachers. So if you're unsure about how to do your units, how to create your lesson plans? Here is the answer
Not only have I been teaching for 10 years, but I also create and sell teaching resources and lesson plans. I have a lot of experience in planning and also getting people to the point where they need to be with their planning skills.
So let’s get started!
I'm going to use English as my planning base. Now you can use this technique in any other subjects, it's fine. This work for most subjects, the idea is that you need to think more about the progression.
Long Term Plans
So students need to progress when they do their lessons, when you're planning your lessons, your students need to get somewhere. So the end goal, the place they need to get is the knowledge they need to understand.
knowledge and understanding is the main goal. We put this at the bottom because this is where we will end up
Medium term goals
How are we going to get there? Well, I always plan my Medium Term plans as big units, and then I break it down smaller into individual lessons. The first thing I do is draw three big circles.
The first circle at the top is the intro, this is the wow part. This is the bit where we grab them sometimes called the hook.
Again, this is a medium term plan an MTP. It's not one lesson, this is a huge array of lessons that I'm going to break down into smaller lessons each week. Because I'm doing English, there's going to be five lessons a week.
And over a quarter of the whole term. So there'll be a lot more lessons than for example, science or history, where you probably only have one or two lessons a week. So you wouldn't need as much content. Right. So the first part is the intro the hook where you're getting them into it, you're introducing the subject or starting them to you want them to see how it's going. That's the beginning. In the middle here is the practice
basic lessons that are going to live in the middle part of the unit. These are where you practice the skills. And sometimes where we learn the skills that we need.
And here is where we develop.
This is where we develop and apply.
So you can see that we start off with a we've got under the assumption they've got no idea nothing, they don't know how to do this at all.
Then we come into the second phase I call this this is phase one.
This is phase two.
And this is phase three.
In the first phase, they we take the assumption that you know nothing about what we are teaching them, even if they know if they've got some prior knowledge, it's still great to come at it from the idea of they don't know anything about what we are teaching.
So we start with an introduction, we get a hook we get them into it. The second phase of lessons is where we really we practice the skills we learn this new skills and work towards where we're getting them. And the third phase is where we develop and apply the skills that we've taught them. And this is where they produce more work. Now I'm very aware that lots of schools will not let you have lessons purely
purely with just activities and have to produce right
In every single lesson, I know that it's not ideal for students, there's been lots of studies, lots of research that show that children need time to talk things over to verbal life. But schools often have rules in place that we have to follow, which don't apply necessarily to the research. So if that's the case, we can still work around. Okay, so let's start at the top here, we're going to start the shift, sorry about this,
sitting on the floor. So we're going to start with our intro with our hook. Now, what I tend to do when I'm planning unit is I think about what the actual unit is going to be for us.
And, and I think about the types of things that I would want to teach during that. And then I just throw them all down on the board a bit like a brainstorming session. So if for example I was going to teach, it might be a book, it could be a subject itself. But if I were to teach,
scripts, play scripts,
the first thing I would do is I would get my free circles ready.
I've been told I need to teach play scripts, or I'm aware, some people don't get told these things. From suddenly aware that I need to teach play scripts,
I would start by getting a bit of pen.
And I would think about all the activities or things that they need to learn to be able to produce effective play scripts. So the first thing that comes to mind is they're going to need to write their own. But that's why here at the bottom, we have five frequence developing the line. So I'll just write it in here.
My equipment were better.
But then spending.
Okay,
write their own script. Because that's just the first thing that comes to mind when I'm planning. But you probably wouldn't start with that. So we're putting it in my last bubble. This is in phase three, that we're gonna think what else will I have them do to help them learn how to write play scripts, maybe I will get them to read lots of play scripts, well, that's going to be right up here, isn't it when I'm introducing the idea to them,
replay scripts.
I want them to read the scripts. So that's going to go my first day, think a little bit more about what I would like them to do. And I probably like them to analyse and pull apart some particular scripts. So that's also going to be up here in phase one, because that's not really practising learning the skills that's more
that's more introduction, and hook. So again, this is going to go in here, we're going to
annotate
some places. So you can see around just writing down all the things that I think helped me, this is just an idea to get lots of ideas down. Right, now that it's come along, I'd like them to actually play out a few of the play scripts to get a feel for it. Now, I think this is more of a skill, because they're starting to see how the play scripts themselves are different to regular books and regular reading. This is my my face to
act out.
I also want them to start to pull apart different parts of the playscript. I want them to look at different acts different scenes, I want them to see about how characters are given direction. So to do that, we're going to chop the place group up in play script, whatever when I decide to give them a chop that up into different scenes, and then use each scene and analyse each thing and use each thing apart. So to do that, we're going to put that in phase two, because that's the skill of practising the different bits of it. So we're going to chop
a script. And along with the chopping of this script, I also want them to start
changing the script.
Now, this is a really, really good thing that a lot of teachers Miss. If you have a script or story, a piece of writing a piece of text, anything like that. And your end goal is to get them to write their own version of it or versions of it.
It's really good idea to give them one that they can change bits of for very young children. For example, it might be things like the free pigs. And instead of pigs, it's free lambs. Something as simple as that. They just make a tiny little change. And they start to own the story, they start to make it their own. And by making these little changes, but keeping the main structure they haven't got to make their own structure, they're able to use what they've already been given to start creating their own and when it comes to making their own they've already got these ideas that baseline for older children.
If you give them a quite a detailed long play script, it's quite overwhelming. They don't know where to start with their own. Maybe they change the character from a boy to a girl.
or something like that. So just changing parts, small parts. And these are skills that we are practising and learning. So this is in phase two.
You could carry on and unknown all the ideas for tic, even if you like, little lesson ideas, anything, this main part here is your collecting or volunteers. For your lesson, you're collecting all these ideas that you think you will want to put into your insurance visual lesson. So you might have things like hot seating, if not hot seating is it's where the children take on the role of a character that's in the book, excuse me, it's in the book, or in the
in the book, or sorry, I got distracted by comments. I really shouldn't look. And it's in the book, or it's in the script or whatever like that. And they take on that character's role, and they stop being them and the rest of the,
the rest of the class ask them questions as if my answer was if they were in character. So it's quite a nice thing to do to get them used to it. Particularly, you're focusing on a book as opposed to a particular skill, like
play scripts, for example, you might be focusing on.
I know, I've done Gangsta Granny a lot by Daisy aquariums, I really like that. And if we do that, tend to be the granny, which is really quite fun.
Anyway, so an individual idea for lessons category, things like flip charts,
where, by taking different elements, excuse me, in terms of play scripts they made
in terms of play scripts, they may
look at directions, they may look at speech patterns, and may look at layout, the different parts and then put them into a flip chart.
With the pages cut out, so these pages move, with bits moves, and they can just slip over and choose different parts. If you want more information about that, I can give you a free example. Just let me know. Okay, so
give me some more space. So now that we've got lots of ideas, you'll have more than this, and you'll spend more than three minutes doing it. And so you'll have a lot more ideas. This is this is now the basis of your overall
of your overall unit plan. This is what your midterm unit is going to look like. You're going to start with reading supplies, annotating supplies, hot seating, more things that you will have come up with phase two, you're going to start acting out the place, you're going to cut the script up into different parts and change bits of it.
Because create flip charts, maybe have some drawing here,
depending on age as well, if they're not too great variety, and if they all do, you might want them to think about the different phrases and particular use of that. We have word banks, I put these up here word banks with a look through the script and pull out the bits they love the most and keep them in a word bank, they're gonna use them themselves later.
If they write their own script, now in phase three, we're going to have some more insight for you because it's complete, we're going to have them act out the script, this is different because and this actually now, because this is acting out their own script, again, think about how it works, we're going to come at it from a director's point of view.
And they're going to direct their class to act out their scripts, like in partners or in groups.
So these things here, each of these are a lesson now if I think now about how I'm going to structure each lesson, and turn this into a solid plan. Well, I will try. I will do this over this side so I can rub these out.
So what we're going to do now is take each lesson and work out how we're going to fit them into our unit. So
I'm going to have here this is going to be one less than the hotseat and this is going to be another lesson. It's gonna be another lesson. This could be another lesson.
Okay, I've got four in my face one, I probably have more again, because you're going to put more ideas down, I'm going to keep going. But which of these Am I going to start with? Well, I want to start with something really good with a hook with a great this is this excited this what we're going to do. So I would probably start with hot seating mainly because kids love that I love the idea of getting into character playing out for their classmates, having fun with it. So I would probably have my opening
open day of my Monday my start of my lesson with a
video
of the script we're going to look at and then hot seating
of that particular video. Then I will come to the next day Tuesday. We're going to read some of these scripts
We're going to have some acting out. And lots of discussion.
Wednesday, we're going to go through the script that we already read. And we're going to annotate.
I'm going to annotate the important parts. Now, when we're doing this, it's really good idea to let them choose their own parts they think are important. And then go back through it as a class and tell them the parts that you know are important. It's really interesting sometimes to see what they think is important, and what actually is important.
Okay, so
then Thursday.
So we've got into the annotation part here, with all the way through we're going to be collecting word by word from our work. Now anytime that they have a great word, they can run it in their word bankbook, or on the sheet that's on the wall, or just a place that they work to collected.
By Thursday, we've read a few of these now we've read, we've looked through them we've done the hotseat, we've done the reading, we've done the discussion, we've done some annotation. Now we're going to compare.
This helps to reinforce the idea that there's different different place groups all have a similar thread, they have similar things they have direction they have.
They have characters that act a certain way, they have tone of voice. So you're going to compare the different things, things that are different things that are same in the many different high scripts that you've read. Now, again, this is a very shortened version, this is only over one week. But you could probably stretch this to two or three weeks if you wanted to, or needed to. Because you do more than what not to script. It's entirely up to you how to do this and how long your unit needs to be.
So we're going to compare our scripts. Now, Saturday, I like to do on Friday, a big piece of work, something that rounds off the week that brings together all the things they've been doing. And because we're only up here in phase one, I don't want them to write their own precise script already, we're too far early, we don't want them to start doing that they'll get discouraged and won't feel as if they're making progress. This is not the way to do it. So my big piece of work for Friday, although it may sound counterintuitive, I'm going to get him to rewrite
the script, one of the ones that we've seen over and over one of the ones that we acted out one of the ones they got seated on, they're going to rewrite it. Now I'm not gonna change anything they can if they wish, and they probably will a lot of them like to take ownership of their work and things they're doing. But just tell them you want them to write out in their own words, they don't need to copy, but they to write out their script, the way it's the way it's done everything from memory. This also helps because it consolidates the idea of the script in them, they are
they are reading this script, internalising them, and then they write them again exactly as they are expect changes.
There's my first week of work again, this is phase one
doesn't need to be just one week can be as many weeks as you need as much work as you're going to put in. I've got a shortened version here.
Okay, so that's my plan. Now, depending on your score, of course, you may have a template you have to use, you may have to go into much more detail about what these lessons will look like. But this is basically what you're going to be doing. For each lesson Monday, we're going to be video we're going to be hot seating, we're going to be introducing, if you need lesson objectives and things like that, the idea of close grip,
Tuesday we're going to be discussing, we're going to be reading we're going to be acting, if you need to do some writing in this part, you can have them and you can have them critique or feedback on each other's right each other's acting.
And that can be the writing and then lots of schools require a piece of writing for each work for each lesson. So if you are,
if we're doing that, that's, that's quite a good way to get something down on paper.
And our annotation is understanding the concept of script writing. And again, that's quite good because you can stick that into their books they can annotate next to it.
As a comparison, is making comparisons. That's quite the learning objective between play script. And our rewriting and script is writing a script. So you can see how those learning objectives in all of
that makes sense.
Right, so we don't fight one.
Let's look at phase two.
So phase two, is where we're getting more into the skills and the
phase two. So we're getting more into the skills and the learning and practising of these skills. But we're still not ready to write our own script.
yet. So the things that we've got in phase two are acting out again, we're going to still keep adding to our word bank, which is really important. And we're going to cut the script up into different parts, which is also important. We're going to change parts of the script. Now this is a big one, this will take many lessons, because you're going to change each part in an individual lesson not don't clump things together, you're going to do drawings for it, we're going to make flip charts. So one lesson we may have might start off our phase two,
brand new weeks, phase two. And we might start off our lesson with going back over the script, we already looked through rotel, maybe even reading the versions that they wrote on the Friday.
So we're going to
read again,
it may feel like overkill, it's not the kids don't pay attention.
Even the kids that do pay attention, even adults taking this stuff on board. And really understanding it is very difficult. I mean, how many of you have read a book, and then later on, just can't remember any of it, or one or two parts, you're covering the whole thing. This is really important that they understand and they know what they're doing. So we're reading it again, particularly the ones that rewrote again, you can read your students versions, if they wrote versions of it.
Again, now we are going to cut
the script
in two parts.
Okay, now, this is really important part here, because they need to segment the different acts. If it's a book, this is really easy to do, because it's quite naturally.
For script play script, or a myth or legend or something like that, or, or if you're in a history lesson, these things might slightly more difficult. But you can still chop them into their individual parts and look at each part individually. Find a natural break,
kind of its parts counterparts. And then lots of discussion
on why those parts are important. Why have we chosen to Kate there, what happened in this part, what happened in that part separate than them, then the rest of the week is going to be this changes by are going to take an individual part each day, this may go on for more than one week, it's got lots of parts. And they're going to change if one part one factor of the story. Now this can build on itself if you want to, particularly if you're working with a book, in the first chapter, they might change the boy to a girl. But that also means in the second chapter, the boy still has to be a girl. And in the second chapter, there may change it that he doesn't live in London, he lives in America. So again, he needs to go backwards, they don't need to
rewrite the first chapter again, they just need to change parts. And as they go along, it builds on itself. And hopefully by the end, it's completely different story, strength, same structure.
I hope that made sense. So you're just changing individual parts as you go. And it helps them create a new story from the story they've already learned. They've already taken on and saying story, a lot of this work for you lots and lots of things.
Okay, so we're gonna be changing parts. As we're doing this, they'll be adding adding in drawings to show the differences, the different changes, this is really good because it consolidates the idea in the mind. We use a flip chart, as I decide, as I said, these lessons will all come through in our individual each day.
Okay, that's phase two. Now we're into our final phase phase three, we're about four weeks in here. Yours might be longer. I had the one week on this one, I had week two and three on the middle part here and this is week four.
So week four,
we're going to write our own scripts, and then act them out and then be directors. Now, give them time with this. Give them lots of time. And again, you can break into part. You might say okay, on Monday, we're going to be writing a brand new scripts today. Go and it's not, it's a little bit overwhelming. So we're going to start on Monday, we're going to write phenomenally the final act. The last part, we're gonna start at the end. work backwards. You might not like to do that. I find that kids quite like this. They know where they're going. And endings are hard. So getting them done first is great, but don't know where they're going with that. So great. You might spend and you might have what I do it this way around. You might first do it the other way around. But so I like the final I write the final right how it all ends out how it all wraps up. Then on Tuesday, they're going to write a story map I'm sure you've seen this before, where the tension builds and the person does this he does this he does this. And the story maps work for everything
they can be for reading a book once their work.
Little girls went on a walk in the forest, she met a wolf, the wolf went to grandma's house.
They couldn't be for scripts, because the same thing they can be for history because Henry the Eighth had his, all of its wives, and then it killed some of them and divorced some of them. And, again, it's a story arc, it can be for science, we think this is going to happen, this happened instead, then this happened. And this is what we found out and work for everything. And they're also really good way to plan out how their story is going to go. So because we've already planned out the font, they know where they're ending up, they know where they're going to be. So they now can work towards that finale, with their story map. And each day of the week, they can plan out a different part and write out a different part of their story map. On the Friday, if you can do it over one week, maybe every two weeks, they can put it all together into one story, complete their final
script, then the next week, the last week, they will be acting it out
critiquing each other's even feedback.
And then they will also be directed, I will send other people, other kids other groups to direct their script that they created.
All of this
is anywhere between two to eight weeks worth of work that I managed to plan out in less than half an hour.
Now, again, it depends on your school and how much they expect from you, you might have to find your template. But once you've done this, generally, the type of lessons that you've created and things that you're going to teach them adult.
This is not taught to student teachers, and I don't know why.
I talk very, very fast. If you need to watch replay please do if you've got any questions about this, please ask me. And I'm sorry for the people who send listeners backwards. I'll try and flip it around. But I will I will put a thing in the notes or take a picture.
Although it's very messy because my handwriting is awful.
Thank you for watching my live video. And I hope it was really really helpful.
Hi
Transcribed by https://otter.ai