As you line up your pens, fill out your teacher planners and try to comprehend the number of tasks thrown at you, that back to school feeling has well and truly landed.
The optimism and adopted mantras of looking after yourself better this year are often high before the onslaught of students returning and that early positivity can fade rather quickly unless we perform some effective housekeeping.
But you know the story all too well! So let’s set about helping out with some timely and welcome resources from the team at Beyond.
Planning Your Year, Term-By-Term
If you’ve not already, grabbing hold of a teacher planner to compartmentalise the unsightly number of jobs you have to do can help your mental wellbeing as well as your day-to-day organisation.
Breaking the terms down into weekly, daily and then lesson-to-lesson chunks should help the focus and relieve the intimidation factor of a year’s worth of planning!
Populating your planning diary in preparation for your back to school mission is never simple. Physical lesson plans get lost and old computer files corrupted or made obsolete by shifting school objectives.
So let’s direct you to some handy information ports that are filled with links and suggested unit plans (adaptable to your needs, of course).
Map Out the Curriculum
These curriculum maps are an ideal way to manage your daily content, map out each term and instantly source a series of high-quality, lesson-ready materials.
For those classes at the exam-end of secondary (they come round fast, don’t they?), a little bookmark of these categories might save some preparation time.
But let’s not forget about Geography, RSE and A Level. These are good starting points for each:
Search for Specific Items
Alternatively, you may be one of those ultra-organised sorts who have a good portion of the year mapped out already (we’ve heard your sort exists!).
In this case, there may be specific items/resources that you’re needing to round off a lesson or fill a gap which is currently a blank folder sitting on your desktop.
In this scenario, feel free to search our indexes to locate exactly what you need, fast!
Spruce Up Your Learning Space
If the abrupt back to school drive has caught you off guard, you might be keen to glam up your boards and classroom walls with a selection of pre-made display items.
Grab a Load of Freebies!
And if you’re looking to sample our materials without committing to a membership, these free resources will give you a good insight into the love and expertise poured into our work.
Mix Up The Media In (Or Out Of) The Classroom
Regrettably, you’ll get bored of talking continuously at your students and your voice will occasionally lose the impact enjoyed on your most energetic days (“Not a chance!”, says the Drama teacher!).
Beyond’s YouTube channel not only provides a good way to break up lessons, but it also offers students a great way to learn independently from the classroom. It may also help their knowledge from wilting away over the summer before the back to school shock to the system!
Beyond Secondary YouTube Channel
Well, we hope this helps (even if it’s in a small way) towards a positive start to the academic year.
Don’t forget to check out our socials over the back to school period, we have daily freebies and some great giveaways. Here’s a small sample of them to get you started…
- Coach Trip: Full Unit of Work
- Y7 Introduction to Science Lesson 1: Health and Safety
- Goodbye, Year 6; Hello, Year 7 Transition Booklet
We can’t account for the million and one other things you have to combat on your return (students returning in incorrect uniform, forgotten sports kit, their almost complete subject-specific amnesia etc etc.) but our team of specialist teachers can always help on the resource side of things.
So good luck for the school year and be sure to share the load with Beyond.
Don’t forget to read even more of our blogs here! You can also subscribe to Beyond for access to thousands of secondary teaching resources. You can sign up for a free account here and take a look around at our free resources before you subscribe too.