1. Overview of the Course
Through this course, we will understand why we need to have a long term plan, the components of a long term plan and how it all comes together.
Section 1- Feel: What is the need for Long Term Planning?: In this section, we will examine the need to create a long term plan for our classroom. We will also examine how we approach plannning for the long term.
Section 2- Imagine: What are the criteria of an effective Long term Plan?: We will dissect the criteria of an effective long term plan and see how they fit into a long term plan. In doing so, we will revisit our main principles of backwards planning, Goals, Assessment, Plan, Checks for Progress and Adaptive or the acronym GAPCA.

2. Overview of the Course
Section 3- Do: How do I create my own Long Term Plan (LTP)?: In this section, we will work on creating a Long term plan of our own using he goals we set for our classroom in the Goal setting Firki Course.
Section 4- Share: How can I share this message with other teachers?: We will examine ways to share goal setting strategies with other teachers around us.
Section 5- Evaluation: The course will end with a graded evaluation that will help check your understanding of the material.

3. Learning Objectives Through this course, you will:
Examine the need for a Long Term Plan
Identify the criteria of an effective Long term plan
Use the goals you have set for your classroom to begin drafting your Long Term Plan
Determine strategies to share how Long Term Planning can help a classroom

4. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
Let us begin with a simple case study.
Jersey is an island that along with the Guernsey Islands is called the Channel Islands. Located in the English Channel, Jersey is considered to be a part of the United Kingdom.
With a population of about a 100,000 on the island, the Island is governed by a Council of Ministers, headed by a Chief Minister. The people are represented ably in the Legislative Assembly.
Over a period of 6 week in June and July of 2016, about 4,150 Islanders took part in a survey. This survey asked Islanders to tell their leaders what they think of Jersey now and what hopes they had for the future of their island.
Lovethispic.com

5. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
The intention was to come up with a shared vision and a common set of goals that the government would tackle, all the while ensuring the people of Jersey felt invested in the goals.
In the aftermath of the survey, the Jersey government came up with a set of 11 goals in 3 large thematic areas, namely, community, environment and economy. Each of these goals broke down further in detailed outcomes.
Lovethispic.com

6. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
Here are a few examples of the goals and detailed outcomes.
Lovethispic.com

7. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
Based on the results of their survey, the Chief Minister and the council of Ministers created a Strategic Long term Plan to ensure that they were meeting the needs of the people for the Future of Jersey. This plan identified where Jersey residents stand with respect to the detailed outcomes they responded to in the survey and decided that they could either:
Continue a trend
Transform a trend
This is how their analysis looked:
Lovethispic.com

8. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
The Council of Ministers then decided a series of steps in order to ensure that the trends they see either continue or are transformed. They believed that taking these measures would meet the outcomes their people wanted and thereby ensure that Jersey’s future ‘is shaped by choice and not by chance’.
Having read the case study, what are your thoughts on the following questions:
Lovethispic.com

9. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
Lovethispic.com

10. Why is there a need for Long Term Planning?
The parallels between a classroom and a small island is uncanny. They both function as eco-systems where progress, culture and communication serve as important functions.
In a classroom, a long term plan acts as a road map to meet vision and goals. It includes Checks for Progress and enables a teacher to be adaptive in times of uncertainty.
Lovethispic.com

11. What are the principles of Backwards Planning?
Click here to view the Firki course- Backwards Planning.
In the Firki course on Backwards Planning, we explored the principles of GAPCA where:
Goals: Having a clear outcome or goal
Assessment: Having a way to assess the goal and knowing what success is
Plan: Having a plan to get to the goal
Checks for Progress: Having timely milestones along the way to check your progress to the goal
Adaptive: Having the space to adapt and be flexible in response to progress
In our goal setting course, we have already explored what effective goals looks like and how we can set them. We have also explored the process of setting effective Formative and Summative assessments in the Firki courses of the same name. In this session, we will examine ways to create a long term plan that has Checks for Progress and is adaptive.
Click to view the courses on - Formative assessments and Summative Assessments.
Cognology.com.au

12. What are the principles of Backwards Planning?
SMART goals are the backbone of an effective LTP and every item of the LTP in anchored in these goals
A Long Term plan includes End of Year and Mid Year goals as assessments to check if the students have been successful
A long term plan also uses the Unit/Term exams as effective milestones to check for progress and evaluate whether students are close to meeting their goals
Cognology.com.au

13. What are the principles of Backwards Planning?
The End of Year and Mid Year Examinations serve as assessments by which the teacher can measure success
The Unit exams serve as great checks for progress to see if students are on track to meeting their goals
Every Long Term Plan needs to be ground in SMART goals. These SMART goals provide clarity and vision for both students and teachers
Cognology.com.au

14. How do I create my own Long Term Plan (LTP)?
Every effective long term plan contains the following criteria:
It is anchored in the goals set in the classroom
It uses the unit assessments taken by students as effective milestones to check progress to goals
It is adaptive and can be changed depending on the progress students have made to aforementioned goals
In order to understand the above criteria, let us look at a first portion of a Long Term Plan. This portion of the LTP contains 3 important features.

15. How do I create my own Long Term Plan (LTP)?
The basic information and a brief description of the context of your classroom
Now it is your turn. Look at the goals you have created for your classroom when you took your Firki course on Goal setting. Use those goals and your understanding of the context of your classroom to create this first portion of your Long Term Plan.
The assessments which will serve as a milestone to check progress to goals
The quantitative and SMART goals that have been set for the classroom.

16. How do I create my own Long Term Plan (LTP)?
Given the goals we have set for our students, how can we actually make it into a long term plan?
Once we have created our goals, we need to 4 simple tasks to help us complete our Long Term Plan. These tasks are:
Create anchor questions that helps guide how we approach teaching a subject
Go through each textbook and calendar the chapters throughout the year
Identify the skills you need to teach your students while teaching them the chapters you calendared in the previous task
Identify a values and mindsets project you can do with your students that aligns to the content and skills in the chapters you identified in the previous tasks

17. Create anchor questions to help our approach to teaching a subject
1. What content and skills should my students master to give them a better understanding of self and the world around them as well as attain mastery in exams?
a. English Language
2. What texts should my students read to get better at decoding, comprehension and deeper understanding?
b. Social Studies/Science
3. What concepts will students master each Unit and what mastery they should get each unit?
c. Values and Mindsets, Exposure and Access

18. Create anchor questions to help our approach to teaching a subject
1. What content and skills should my students master to give them a better understanding of self and the world around them as well as attain mastery in exams?
At Teach For India, fellows use the questions mentioned above to help anchor their approach to teaching a subject.
a. English Language
An anchor question is a question that helps a teacher think about what is important for their students to be able to do during the academic year.
2. What texts should my students read to get better at decoding, comprehension and deeper understanding?
b. Social Studies/Science
3. What concepts will students master each Unit and what mastery they should get each unit?
c. Values and Mindsets, Exposure and Access

19. Create anchor questions to help our approach to teaching a subject
They use the following questions:
What content and skills should my students master to give them a better understanding of self and the world around them as well as attain mastery in exams?
Values and Mindsets
Exposure and Access
Teaching values and mind sets allows students to build skills that will supplement their mastery in examinations.
What concepts will students master each Unit and what mastery they should get each unit?
Social Studies
Science
Math
Social Studies, Science and Math use the same question and it revolves around concepts that students need to know for their grade.

20. Create anchor questions to help our approach to teaching a subject
What texts should my students read to get better at decoding, comprehension and deeper understanding?
What forms of writing and speaking should they do to become articulate and eloquent?
What should they do regularly to become better at communicating and attaining mastery in Literacy?
English Language
Reading Comprehension
Reading Fluency
Writing
Speaking and Listening
Teaching English as a language requires teachers to teach reading comprehension. Reading fluency, writing and speaking and listening. The questions used for the English language cover all the above mentioned parts of English instruction.
You could draft similar questions for each subject you teach or use these questions to help guide your thinking while creating your LTP. The question should help you note down what is important for your students to learn during the year. It is now your turn. Identify one anchor question for each subject are you teach. You could create new anchor questions or use the ones mentioned above.

21. Go through each textbook and calendar the chapters throughout the year
The second task we need to learn to do is to use our textbooks to calendar the chapters we will be teaching through the academic year.
As an example: Let us look at how Smriti calendared the chapters from her English and Maths textbooks. This is from the last unit in the year. She worked backward from the end of the unit and made sure she included all the chapters from the textbook so that her students felt ready to answer their final exams. She alse knew that the last unit included final exams and study holidays so she made sure she included fewer chapters to cover so that she could also get time to revise and revisit older content she taught as her students would be writing an exam on the content taught in the entire year.

22. Go through each textbook and calendar the chapters throughout the year
In order to do this, we can follow a series of simple steps:
Use the questions to help us think about the teaching unit
Make a note of the goals we need to achieve in that unit
Read our textbooks and think about the chapters we will could cover in this unit

23. Go through each textbook and calendar the chapters throughout the year
Now it is your turn. You can create the following table in your book to help you calendar your chapters for the year. You can download the template here and use it to create your own Long Term Plan.
Benchmark/Time in the year
Language
Math
Social Studies
Science/EVS
End of Year Examination Goals
End of Year Examination Plan
Unit 3 Examination Goals
Unit 3 Examination Plan
Mid Year Examination Goals
Mid Year Examination Plan
Unit 1 Examination Goals
Unit 1 Examination Plan
Current Reality / Previous End of Year Examination Goals

24. Identify the skills you need to teach your students in each subject
In addition to teaching the chapters mentioned in the textbook, we need to teach our students skills they can use in the real world. This helps the students understand the relevance of what they have learnt. To learn more about the importance of relevance in education, do complete the Firki course on ‘What is an Excellent Education? II’

25. Identify the skills you need to teach your students in each subject
For example, Smriti went through her Science textbook and read the chapters called ‘Soil’, ‘Forest’ and ‘Changes around us’. After the reading the textbook, she found that while teaching her students the chapter, she would be teaching them the skills of comparing, contrasting, distinguishing between different things, summarising. Similarly, while reading the chapters ‘Reading maps of different kinds’ and ‘Africa’, she would be teaching her students skills of compare and contrast, reading maps and describing features. So she included these into her Long Term Plan.
To identify the skills, we need to look the chapter in the textbook and think of all the actions our students will be doing while studing this chapter.

26. Identify the skills you need to teach your students in each subject
Now you do the same. You have already looked at your textbooks and identified when you want to teach the chapters mentioned there. Read the chapters and identify skills you want to teach your students. Once you have identified them, add them to the table you have already made in your notebooks.
This is the most time consuming portion of creating an LTP but it is also the most important. Just like the island of Jersey, we need to create a strategic plan to ensure our students meet their goals.

27. Identify a values and mindsets project you can do with your students
As we have seen all throughout our Firki courses, an excellent education is not complete without it being integrated. This means that an excellent education needs to include values and mindsets. Similarly, a Long Term Plan, which is an important part of delivering an excellent education to your students, also needs to be integrated.

28. Identify a values and mindsets project you can do with your students
An integrated Long term plan includes a project done each unit that can be done by the students in your class. It also ties into the content of the chapters you are teaching at the time.
For example: Smriti’s project is connected to the themes she is teaching her students in Science, Changes around us. She also put down some questions she wants her students to explore while doing the project.
The subjects we are focussing on here are values and mind sets, and exposure and access. The anchor questions that help us decide what we want our students to learn this year.
End of year goals for each subject areas

29. Putting it all together
Now it is your turn. Add a new column to your table for values and mindsets/access and exposure and add the outline of a project that aligns to the chapters and skills you are teaching your students that week.
Once you have completed your table in your notebook, each unit should ideally look like the image in the next slide.

30. Putting it all together
Each subject area and its corresponding anchor question
The goals we decided for our students in the goal setting Firki course
The actual plan for the unit includes:
Chapters in each subject area
Skills to be learnt in the unit for each subject area
Values and mind sets, access and exposure project that aligns to the content and skills in other subject areas.

31. How can we share this message with others around us?:

32. How can we share this message with others around us?:
Here are other suggestions to spread the message of Long Term Planning in different classrooms.
Share your Long Term goals with your students. Have them give you feedback on what they want to learn and what does not seem interesting to them.
Have a Long Term Planning party with the teachers in your school. Everyone can bring food and their goals. Both are vital to Long Term Planning parties.
Make your students ambassadors of your classroom Long Term Plan. They can take the onus of explaining it to other teachers.
These are suggestions. You can spread the message in any way you feel comfortable.

33. Evaluation

34. Evaluation
1. Expert Response: An effective LTP uses End of year assessments to check if students are successful while it uses unit assessments to check the progress made by students and if they are on track to meeting their eventual goals.

35. Evaluation

36. Evaluation
2. Expert Response: The skill of compare and contrast is the easiest way to make the content of the chapter relevant to the students today. It is also a skill that can be used by students in different subjects or projects.

37. Evaluation

38. Evaluation
3. Expert Response: The unit focuses on the food animals eat, we eat and they way we live. We will also be studying about agriculture and how it affects other professions. It lends itself easily to the theme of everything is interconnected or interdependence.

39. Evaluation

40. Evaluation
4. Expert Response: An effective LTP allows the teachers to have flexibility to make changes to what they plan to teach based on the situation they are in. For example, if I know that August, September includes upto 10 tens as holidays for Ganesh Chathurthi for my students, I will plan to cover fewer chapters and have my students do a simpler project for values and mindsets/Access and exposure.

41. Evaluation