We have now updated the Primary Planning Tool to support multi-class planning. This is a significant new addition to the tool if you or your colleagues who teach in a multi-class setting.
We have recognised the difficulties teachers have in planning for several classes at once. These difficulties are further increased if class groupings do not fall into the same curriculum stage e.g. a combination of first, second and third class. Teachers can now create a single plan for their particular combination of classes. All the required curriculum content (including aims, objectives, skills and concepts), is at their fingertips.
Understanding Multi-class Planning
Curriculum planning in a multi-class classroom presents particular difficulties for teachers over and above those of a single class setting. There is the requirement to become familiar with all aspects of the eleven subject areas of the curriculum, perhaps at two or more levels. Teachers then need to be able to prioritise for their own pupils, class groupings and school setting and to develop strategies around linkage and integration. Coordinating curriculum delivery in such a way as to maximise efficient use of time, while ensuring pupils have a broad range of learning experiences and avoiding unnecessary repetition is a priority. These difficulties were recognised in the INTO report “Teaching in Multi-Classes” (2003) and by practising teachers for many years before and since.
We at the Primary Planning Tool design team have addressed these difficulties with the new multi-class planning feature. Teachers now have available to them, in one location, all the curriculum content required for their class grouping. They also have the facility to create a single plan to cover any combination of classes. Our aim is to significantly reduce teachers’ planning workload, help them develop plans that are ‘living’ documents in the classroom. This allows more time for thinking about how they want to mediate the curriculum to create better learning experiences for their pupils.
Multi-class for Principals
Principals can now add their teachers to multiple class levels within the Primary Planning Tool. This can be carried out on the admin side under “Add Teacher” if they are a new user. When creating new users the principal can now select the various different class level associated with their teachers.
If you are already a Primary Planning Tool user your principal can do this on the “Staff” overview. Here principals can “edit users” to assign their teachers to other class levels. This will then allow teachers to have access to all the class levels assigned to them, enabling them to plan across different class levels within one plan.
Please view our demonstration video below for more details on getting your teachers set up.
Multi-class for Teachers
You can now create a single long-term plan, short-term plan and cuntas míosúil for your own combination of classes. Choose curriculum content from any of your class levels. Mix and match content to suit your particular needs. Your plan displays subject content sorted and labelled by class level. Filter your view of your plan by any combination of subject(s), class level(s) or month(s) (long-term plan). You can also generate themes linked to the curriculum for your own class levels.
Please view our demonstration below to find out how to plan with our multi-class feature.