fellow teachers, can I ask you what you think about these planning requirements?

[jetgirl]

The school I teach in is due an ofsted inspection and so slt are, understandably, keen to make sure we do well. There have been issues in some subject areas with regards to lack of schemes of work and to counter this we are all re-writing our schemes onto new pro-formae. I have no problem with this. However, each scheme has to be written lesson by lesson (though not in full detail), which I don't feel is a) entirely useful as sometimes you need to change lesson plans, or b) acceptable under the planning guidelines (though I may have made that up). I was under the impression that long and medium term plans were acceptable in terms of schemes of work, though am prepared to be told I'm wrong.

The other thing is that a member of slt is doing learning walks every week specifically to look at planning. If this teacher comes into our lessons, we have to provide a full lesson plan. While planner style lesson plans will be accepted, we will have to explain why we haven't provided the full a4 lesson plan you might normally provide for a planned obs, such as for performance management. We will not know in advance whether we will be seen, so in effect all lessons will have to be planned in detail, referencing aen, eal, plts, etc.

Is this excessive or does this happen in other secondaries?

Personally I prefer lesson by lesson SOWs as then I don't need to spend so long planning individual lessons each week. I try to do them for most of my classes at the beginning of each half term and then scribble on the printed out SOW to make changes / amendments as i go through. My subject is also taught by staff from other departments so i like knowing that the schemes are detailed enough to support non-specialists (but always make it v clear they can do whatever they like in each lesson so long as the overall objectives are met)

BUT... My department got criticised at our last ofsted for having lesson by lesson SOWs... 'too rigid', 'don't allow for personalised learning' etc... Personally I think this is rubbish as we all edit, adapt, change as we go through, but ofsted obviously couldn't tell that from the paperwork.

I know it's rather different as I'm a primary teacher, but we have to write Long Term (annual), Medium Term (termly or termly topic schemes of work) and Short Term (daily) lesson plans for every subject. The format is set by school and it is several pages of A3 for long term, as many A4 pages as neededfor medium and set 2 sides of A4 for short term, for every flipping subject! Last year we revamped our curriculum abandoning QCA schemes of work and devising our own topic led plans. So we had to write it all and we didn't get any additional time for it. I think I'm still recovering!

I am rewriting my SoW over this summer as the KS3 curriculum is changing. It won't include lesson by lesson plans, but suggested activities and assessment opportunities for each lesson.

I also have individual lesson plans (A4 sheet each) as it just helps me be more prepared and just reminds me what I'm doing when I'm flitting between different year groups in one day. I don't always stick to it, but I would still rather have it there than not.

I can't believe they are making you write individual lesson plans for each lesson. What an utter waste of time. The SOW thing sounds bonkers too.

I agree with everything freerangeeggs said.

I do lesson ny lesson SOWs, but I have a lot of non-specialists teaching and they need it. I also teach English, not my subject, and they do very detailed plans. They aren't exactly lesson by lesson, but step by step activities.

I need this as a non-specialist, and do still adapt stuff for my individual class.

we have lesson by lesson sow's, and all teaching members in the department take part in writing/rewriting them as needed. The feeling in my department is that they are really useful, and save each member of staff having to reinvent the wheel by making very similar powerpoints 6x over. Doesn't mean one has to stick rigidly to them, but can use the bits you want and discard/add the rest. It also saves time for requisitions, because instead of having to type out 600 ml hydrochloric acid, litmus paper, magnesium ribbon (x cm ) etc etc, you can just put the lesson code in and the techs know what you want.
when we discuss it post teaching we will all have taught it slightly differently, depending on personal style, ability of groups and so on.

We have lesson-by-lesson Schemes of Learning.

Whoever writes the SOL, produces an Excel version which is then printed as a bound page-per-lesson scheme. There's spaces to annotate on it as & when you're departed from it (eg. 'Omitted this lesson - too challenging for this lower ability group' or 'Extension activity for more able '.

It's fine if anyone does go off piste, so long as they cover the key assessment for that half term - there's usually 2 other pieces of levelled work per SOL, & individual teachers adapt those to suit their group.

Every half term we collect the annotated SOL booklets in & have a dept. meeting ('So everyone agrees we could compress the Lady of Shalott SOL into 4 weeks?' or 'I've got a split class & colleague X & I found this SOL a right bugger to divvy up...' or the sharing of innovations to existing scheme etc).

Author of SOL then tweaks accordingly for next year.

We do also have an even more detailed one-off 'Golden Lesson' pro forma, which is used for Golden Lesson observations (everyone writes a lesson plan, SLG pick half a dozen ones to watch), peer coaching (one experienced/one newish teacher paired to watch each other's lessons & discuss strategies), performance management, Ofsted...

So IME, the only thing unreasonable in the OP is the expectation to produce full lesson plans for a learning walk without notice - they'd be expected to be in place already where I teach.

& it's taken at least 3 years to get from a more casual approach to having all that sorted departmentally, so it's a bit much to expect individual teachers to suddenly produce it for every lesson!