Teaching year 1, no partner teacher and no previous planning, planning everything from scratch. Furious, tired and stressed. It’s only the first week back.

[Se12345]

Started a year 1 teacher role at a new school. The school has no previous planning from the year before. They follow white rose but English is a new scheme so PowerPoints are made from scratch.
History, geography and science from scratch. Re and PHSE is jigsaw but needs reading through long plans. Their phonics scheme is new to me let alone the sounds they learn in year 1. I come from EYFS. I found myself working every night planning and all weekend. To create 6 week plans from scratch looking at medium term plans, to then make PowerPoint lessons, learning objective files, worksheets. I feel stressed. The previous year- they had too many teachers and they said the supply didn’t plan well and didn’t put planning up. They are waiting for ofsted and are requies improvement. I cannot go further back as all their schemes changed. Anyone ever did this? One form school.

Sounds awful.
I had to do the same as a new teacher but before dreaded PowerPoints were a thing.

Can you buddy up with a nearby school and share some planning or find a friendly Facebook page?

Other than that, I don't know what to suggest. Ex teacher here for a reason...

Not to sound trite as I'm not a teacher, but aren't there templates online?

What did they use last year?

sounds exhausting

Of your school.is part of an academy or other grouping (diocese etc) then tell your head they need to out you in touch with your counterparts in yr1 in other schools or curriculum leads at the centre. Don't try to do it all yourself.

Hello,
Which schemes are you following for English and topic?
I’m Year 1 and happy to share.
xx

Could you try looking at Twinkl or classroom secrets for the PowerPoints at least. If the school doesn’t have subscription, it might be worth paying for a subscription to save time!

I vote you for minister of Education. I am actually shocked at this post. Surely this should be planned centrally. Such repetitive work by so many teachers.

Yeah, I’ve kind of had this experience when joining a one form entry. Previous planning was either non existent or really poor. The previous teacher didn’t save anything on the staff server so little to nothing available. I can recommend PlanBee if you need PowerPoints. I used that. It’s about £6 a month (I know you shouldn’t have to buy this out of your own money) but it saved so much time. Good luck!

Yep. I had exactly the same as an ECT (different year group). No longer teaching as it destroyed me.

Surely this is where AI would be best used? It’ll create those things for you if you tell it what you want.

Anything good on the Oak National Academy resources ?

www.thenational.academy

I would definitely purchase a subscription to twinkl (it’s improved massively over the years) get on X and chat to other teachers and share resources. There used to be an fab sun eve planning session on twitter back in the day for maths teachers where you just posted topic activity you needed and everyone helped each other. Anyone from your training course you could ask? Or ask other teachers in the school what resources and websites etc they use to plan? Work smart and some lessons ypu really don’t need an all singing and dancing PowerPoint!!!

Tbh (and I don’t think this is ok) this is what teaching is. It’s why so many people leave. I’m still in it after 25 years but moved to Sen.

I feel a bit weird reading this. As an NQT I joined a school where I had to plan everything from scratch. No schemes for anything, previous teacher took her plans with her and 1 form entry standalone school with no support. I lasted 2 years and no wonder. This was 20 years ago so far fewer online resources. I wonder if things had been different whether I would have made a career from it. I loved teaching but the planning workload was so insane on top of everything else.

Twinkl, National Oak Academy, White Rose and AI (Teachmate is great if your school has a subscription are your friends.
Speak to the Year 2 teacher and look at their plans to get an idea of how the school do things. Be open with your SLT that you require support because you didn’t expect to have to reinvent the wheel . Good luck OP,

Could you ask for some supply cover to give you some time? Might sound naive but if there are no resources…. And AI can help you massively.

Use AI to help you.

Join a union.

Both of those should provide support if needed.

Oh for the days of chalk and talk, being able to modify the day if anything cropped up on the News etc.

Get yourself on Twinkl, the Plan It section has all the lesson plans, worksheets, power points and so on all ready to go.

There will be others thay have planned this. Don't do it from scratch - use something that already exists. Modify if and when you have time and need to. But DON'T try to be perfect.

Other have suggested Oak Academy etc. TES sometimes has good stuff. Think about how much you value your time - no, you shouldn't have to spend your own money, but if it costs you £20 to get resources that would have taken you 20 hours to make yourself.......

Also, you don't need to have a flashy PowerPoint every lesson. Yes, they can be helpful, but im fairly certain that children learned to read/write/do maths before there were such things. I keep reminding myself thay good learning happens when pupils are busy working, not when I'm delivering something whizz bang and entertaining.

Don't forget that there are lots of resources from Covid times if you're desperate. Obviously you don't just want to shove on a video all the time, but a 10 monitor bitesize video followed by related work isn't the end of the world.

It’s madness. Every teacher in the country either starting from the ground up or the school buying into schemes, and I’m yet to see a scheme that wasn’t utter shit.

In France it is all done centrally. Maths and English used to be here too.

I think you need to have a chat about how much planning is needed and see if they can make more ppa time for you this half term

I had to plan everything myself in my first school, and it drained all my time! And this was a large secondary - just no one shared anything and I didn’t think to ask as I was new . Second school we each took a year and planned the SOW and that was so much better. Recommend going online too for resources, see if you can get certain SoW recommended as the quality is variable . But you’ll have to go with good enough, rather than each lesson being great.

1. Join groups on Facebook for ECTs and Year 1 teachers. Most people are on there to help each other.
2. Subscribe to Twinkl (Maths and Humanities and Science) and/or Literacy Shed - English and look at Oak Academy.
3. Buy selected Plan Bee units for History and Geography.

I actually preferred planning everything myself to trying to work out someone else’s planning. But it did take time. AI can help make power points and worksheets. Also your mentor should be supporting you with this or al least getting you the subscriptions you need.

Along with Twinkl I recommend Teach Mate AI, Teachers Pet and CGP Plus.