Planning and Organisation Strategies for Primary Teachers

In such a fast-paced environment where the classroom setting is ever changing, it can be a pretty daunting exercise maintaining the structure.

Although adaptability is everything in the classroom, here’s some top planning and organisation tips to help stand you in good stead throughout the school year.

Keep things as simple as possible

It’s important to remember that every primary school pupil will be different and they may require varied levels of help and support.

All planning and organisation should therefore take account of this, ensuring that pupils have adequate time to both understand and complete the tasks being given to them.

While this may slow elements of the lesson down, especially where additional resources or materials are required, some basic approaches can make a big difference.

Instructions and processes should be simplified as much as possible, and you may wish to break down bigger tasks into smaller manageable chunks.

It’s also worth ensuring that pupils understanding what is being asked of them, so time should be included to demonstrate and run through the learning processes.

Think about the classroom set-up

Organising a classroom requires a primary teacher to consider several key pointers – from their own desk to the layout of tables.

Look to keep the number of items on your own desk to a minimum and place it in a position where can have oversight of the entire class.

Tables should then be arranged so that no one has their back to the board, with desks arranged in small groups or in a U-shaped layouts often popular.

Children should also have space to move around as necessary and any resources should be positioned in easy to access areas to ensure that classroom tasks can be started as quickly as possible.

Know the week ahead

With many different lessons and tasks to manage throughout a week, alongside meetings and other essential activities, it’s important for a teacher to know what any day involves.

A desk calendar can help with organisation, acting as a support to digital calendars found with email account and similar, as it provides a simple and visual means of tracking important dates, events and meetings.

You may also want to colour code your diary for certain lessons or tasks, as it can be a useful way of staying on top of any marking or lesson planning deadlines.

Remember that flexibility is key

As touched on previously, children may learn at different rates and understanding things differently, meaning it might not always be possible to stick rigidly to plans.

Flexibility is therefore vital within any planning, as you’ll need to have back-up activities and support resources ready in case the direction of a lesson changes 

slightly or youngsters are not sure on certain concepts.

Worksheets can be easily organised into folders by topics to help with this, and kept in easily accessible locations so that they can be used as and when required.

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