Sharon Williams Educational

  • Home
    • About
    • Testimonials - training
    • Testimonials - N-Act Theatre
  • Blog
    • Overview
    • So you want to be a teacher
    • Behaviour for Learning
    • Learning and Progress
    • Questioning and Collaborative Learning activities
    • Assessment
    • Lesson planning
  • Training
    • Behaviour Management strategies for the non-specialist drama teacher
    • Primary >
      • Drama teaching in the primary classroom
    • Secondary >
      • An Eye on Learning - video
    • IMPACT
  • N-Act Theatre in schools
    • Mental Health First Aid Staff Training
    • Our Productions
    • Drama exam packages
    • Tour dates for Friend
    • Tour dates for Linked >
      • Keeping safe online
    • Tour dates for Invisible
    • Linked production shots >
      • What impact have we had?
    • Friend Production shots
    • Primary performance projects
    • N-Act Theatre Stage at the Village Green
    • Our residential at British School, Muscat, Oman
    • Who we are
    • Booking information
  • Contact
  • Contact form
  • Home
    • About
    • Testimonials - training
    • Testimonials - N-Act Theatre
  • Blog
    • Overview
    • So you want to be a teacher
    • Behaviour for Learning
    • Learning and Progress
    • Questioning and Collaborative Learning activities
    • Assessment
    • Lesson planning
  • Training
    • Behaviour Management strategies for the non-specialist drama teacher
    • Primary >
      • Drama teaching in the primary classroom
    • Secondary >
      • An Eye on Learning - video
    • IMPACT
  • N-Act Theatre in schools
    • Mental Health First Aid Staff Training
    • Our Productions
    • Drama exam packages
    • Tour dates for Friend
    • Tour dates for Linked >
      • Keeping safe online
    • Tour dates for Invisible
    • Linked production shots >
      • What impact have we had?
    • Friend Production shots
    • Primary performance projects
    • N-Act Theatre Stage at the Village Green
    • Our residential at British School, Muscat, Oman
    • Who we are
    • Booking information
  • Contact
  • Contact form
Click here for the Blog Overview
SCROLL DOWN for the blog post of the month or
FILTER BY TOPIC by clicking on one of the following buttons
So you want to be a teacher
Behaviour for learning
Learning and Progress
Questioning & Collaborative Learning
Lesson Planning
Assessment

Time management - tips for busy teachers

10/14/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture

Time management – or How to Become More Organised

There are so many new elements to becoming a teacher. When you envisaged your new responsibility how many of you thought beyond planning and delivering lessons?

Suddenly your whole life revolves around bells and your day is divided into hourly slots.

You are expected to be present at meetings, reflective during observations, inspirational during lesson delivery and creative during lesson planning!

Alongside this, you need to mark work, write assignments, evaluate lessons and gather evidence for your portfolios!

Some of you may find this water off a duck’s back; but some of you may be the proverbial swan – gliding on the surface, but frantically paddling for survival under the water.

​If you fit into the latter category, you need to develop a new skill which you may not have considered as being as important as all the others you are learning – how to be organised.

Although written with the trainee in mind - these tips are for all busy teachers!

When I first started teaching, I remember someone coming in to deliver a session on time management. He gave me probably the two most important tips of my career. And I still use them to this day.

  1. Plan horizontally.
  2. Only carry what you can do!

1. Plan horizontally

​
If you are not a list writer, you will need to become one!

I imagine most of your lists are vertical, and look something like this.
Picture
You will probably be adding to this list several times each day, making it longer and longer! As more things are added, you may find you can't complete some of the smaller items - and you may miss deadlines or forget to go somewhere important! 

Motivationally and emotionally this is not a good place to be. You need to manage your lists so that you are not constantly feeling like you are failing to achieve!

This is where the horizontal planning comes in.

There are many ways to do this, and you need to find your own style, but I will explain the ethos behind horizontal planning and you can take it from there.

​Firstly you need to be able to prioritise each task, which you can only do by noting deadlines.

Look at the example below which has taken the original list and added two additional columns.
​Already this doesn’t appear as onerous!

Your assignment – while important – is not due in for some time, so you can plan to start this at a later date – but do put it in your diary!

The next step is just as important. You need to put both tasks and deadlines into your diary/calendar.

​In other words, put down when you will start the task, and when it is due to be completed. 
Picture
One of my colleagues used to write her list on an A4 page which she had divided into days of the week. 

​This was not just for the deadlines but more importantly for the tasks themselves.  See the example below.
 
In red are those personal arrangements you have that stop you being able to work on certain evenings. So in the example below, anything needed to be completed by Wednesday will need to be done on Monday! This will help you maintain a work-life balance for most of the time.

The blue comments are those which remind you when you have longer periods to work – Wednesday looks like a good day for getting meaty tasks done. (Although be prepared for other things to crop up so don’t leave things to the last minute!)

In the example, Thursday is not a good day to complete tasks – so accept that and don’t fret about what you can't do! ​
Picture
​Once you have plotted your week, you can then add when you will do certain tasks on your list. As each task arises, put it into the diary on a day when you are more likely to be able to achieve it!

​If you find you have no time in a given week - see if you can negotiate completing the task the following week instead. 
Picture
How you manage this is up to you.

The only non-negotiable is that you do have to plan your time.

​You cannot survive as a trainee – or a teacher – if you are constantly chasing your tail!

Picture
Read on for 2 - Only carry what you can do!

Read More
1 Comment

    Dr Sharon Williams
     
    Sharon has spent many of her 33 years in secondary education working with trainee teachers.

    She has mentored trainees, trained mentors ... and has developed and delivered mentoring and coaching programmes in schools.
     
    Countless trainee teachers have benefited directly from working alongside Sharon, or the mentors she has trained  -  and all have successfully passed their training year!

    Archives

    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016

    Recent posts

    So, you want to be a teacher?

    ​How to make the most of observing.

    Behaviour management - there are two ways of looking at it...

    Behaviour management - some tips to help you.

    It's all firsts!

    Planning for positive behaviour for learning.

    Where the real learning takes place.

    How to observe - questioning.

    How to observe - collaborative learning.

    ​Using video to increase the power of your mentor meetings.

    Assessment - what does it mean to you? What does it mean to your students?

    Lesson planning 1: Learning outcomes and success criteria

    Lesson planning 2: Starters and plenaries and why they are so important to the learning process

    Lesson planning 3: Differentiation - what is it and how do I do it?

    ​Establish routines for you and the students - and have a calm week

    Student routines - another step towards becoming a good teacher
    ​

    What is learning and how can I plan for it?

    Categories

    All
    Assessment
    Behaviour Management
    Collaborative Group Work
    Differentiation
    Keeping On Top
    Learning
    Learning Talk
    Lesson Planning
    Progress
    Questioning
    Routines
    Starters And Plenaries
    Time Management
    Video Observations: An Eye On Learning

    View Sharon Williams's LinkedIn profile View Sharon Williams's profile
    CLICK HERE for updates of new blog posts and CPD information
    Picture
Contact: info@n-acttheatre.co.uk 
Picture
Picture
Home
Blog
Training
N-Act Theatre in Schools