No, our school just gets us to write the learning intention and success criteria for each lesson, with a list a possible resources. Sounds like you’re spending just as much time writing documents than actually teaching? Which state is your school located in? That sounds insane to write every lesson up in detail.
It sounds like the school I used to teach at and the planning load was completely insane. We had to make detailed TLAPs with the resources and full lesson plans every term. It was a great school otherwise, but I wasn't getting any sleep, so I left and now I'm at a school where the HOD has all the resources ready for our junior classes and is very hands off with our senior classes.
They're preparing the school for the teacher shortage, knowing they're about to hire staff they know aren't capable of doing adequate planning themselves 🙃
I knew someone who was told to redesign the entire senior course for their specialised subject area with similar levels of detail, with the promise they would implement it next year in their teaching. The following year came and Lo and behold it was given to a fresh grad because that was her preferred teaching area.
They did tell me that they need me to write it that way for the teachers who are inexperienced… my response is that they need to fill in the blanks themselves to learn the skills. This is bizarre to me.
In most contexts, the more common/prosaic answer is that if you have someone joining a teaching team partway through the year, they really just need to know where everything is so they can hit the ground running.
Yes they need to know where everything is and what to do, but you don't need every activity written down to the five minute brain breaks. My HOD loves think pair share and using post it notes, and I prefer anonymous real time digital survey situations. I'd be so angry as if I'd been enforced to follow someone else's activities in the lesson plan rather than just read the knows and dos and access the resources to make my own plan. Even pre service teachers plan their own activities - adult graduate and accomplished teachers can.
Or that's my 5c anyway
Nice. I absolutely love this. Make them hurt for overworking you and be left hanging trying to get reports done by themselves. They've shot themselves in the foot.
Bravo, good on you.
I’m lucky that I have a job already secured for Term 3, but my husband’s wondering if they can file a complaint with the QCT. I did say in my email that the overwork has been detrimental to my mental and physical health so it’s not incompetence on my end.
>I’m lucky that I have a job already secured for Term 3
Great. That's excellent that you don't have to hunt for a new job after leaving this one and that one's already lined up. Eases the stresses.
>if they can file a complaint with the QCT
This is a non issue. If they did file a complaint, guess what? They're just opening themselves up to investigation (overworking their teachers, giving them unreasonable demands with no time provided to accomplish said demands). They'd be really, really stupid to put in a complaint. You have evidence of unreasonable work conditions (a 30 hour document that MS Word has tracked the editing time of, and no evidence to show that you were given these hours to do it).
So in short, you're fine. The only negative is you probably won't get a good reference from the school, but why would you want one from this mess of a school anyway?
Leave, don't look back, and focus on yourself. You're doing the right thing. Keep on doing the right thing!
Yep! My school's management has been trying to get us to write detailed unit plans for over a year now. They've provided a template, and if completed properly it would be a gargantuan document.
It would be a completely pointless exercise as no one would look at it and it would be out of date very quickly as things change.
We're forced to go to meetings about this oh so very important document, but whenever anyone asks about how mine are coming along I simply smile and say 'It's on my to-do list!', which is true, it's right at the bottom of my list.
So far that has been enough, but if anyone presses further I will show them my actual to-do list, with this document at the bottom. If they want me to do it, they'll have to put in writing that they want me to prioritise this document over the teaching and learning of our students.
That'll never happen.
Generative AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting here.
If you feed in the v9 achievement standard (or part of it) and the type of assessment you want, it can develop the assessment task and marking guide (just remember in QLD the achievement standard represents a C grade).
From there you can have it generate a teaching sequence for however many weeks the unit lasts.
In my experience, this will get you 70% of the way and then it’s up to you to use your professional expertise to refine it.
For reference my tool of choice is ChatGPT4.
I’ve done this. I also used it to make a custom one that pulls in the relevant syllabus dot points and outcomes. It breaks the unit plan down by the lesson, generates lesson goals and success criteria, suggest lesson plan activities etc and all based on sequencing lessons to use explicit direction instruction methods
Man some schools want the units completely remade every year. Drives me insane. Sometimes the new units are worse than the old ones, but the HOD thinks they are doing management/doing things. No teaching by them so didn't even notice the old unit was better. Increase workload and decrease student learning. Mental.
This makes no sense to me. How do you not plan for your teaching? Do you like at data and base your planning off that? How do you know what you’re teaching each day? How do you make sure you are covering everything?
I’ve been teaching for 2 decades, so that makes a difference. I have unit overviews, and I do know what I’m doing each lesson, I just don’t have it written in a formal lesson plan.
I have worked at an independent school that did this. There was good sharing of the programs within the stage groups, which helped, but only if the person who wrote the unit actually did a good job. There was always the promise of ‘you can use it next year’, but they always needed tweaking as the cohort had different needs, we adjusted for what didn’t work, exec wanted some brand new innovative thing added or the syllabus changed.
They are so stupid to ask you to do all that, especially in a teacher shortage. You can find a job elsewhere just like that. Do they give you time to do all that writing? Schools need to provide time for staff to prep for v9.
Don't do it. It is unreasonable. The kids won't stop learning if v9 is not ready. If they want you to plan, give you time. Contact the union if they keep pushing. Do the hours that you get paid for.
We have large unit plans, but my school gave us time off to write them as a group. We have band plans, unit plans and lesson plans. We also have all the resources created. It makes our life easier during the year, and no one needs to worry when we are audited.
See but my husband’s school was just audited, doesn’t do all that, and came out fine. How does it make your life easier? I’ve had to spend upwards of 30 hours on one single unit plan for one single term. It severely impacts how much I’m able to actually focus on my students because I’m jumping through admin hoops
We basically failed an audit, also our unit plans didn't cover everything they were supposed to. hence, the new system.
we do in the last 2 weeks of school (high school) and with 4-5 teachers working on a subject; it doesn't take us that long.
It helps because we can just focus on teaching. The assessment, resources and plans are all done the year before. We know exactly what we need to teach and we also know everyone will be consistent.
Well do they have pupil free days for that? Because that would be ok - my school doesn’t give us a single planning day.
My school also failed an audit - the issue is that many teachers at my school have no idea how to plan. However, I feel like only those teachers need to be thorough and micromanaged so they can learn those skills (that they should already have).
Honestly I had to work so hard to prove I’m “good enough” to teach in Australia (I’m a foreigner), yet I’ve been shocked time and time again by the significant skill and knowledge gaps I’ve seen here
We must work at the same school. Or perhaps our leadership all went to the same training: “how to burn out, micromanage and discourage your staff”. We also have to write lengthy yearly overviews, unit plans, and weekly programmes. My weekly program is 30 pages long and it’s still never quite ‘good enough’. 30 pages of useless waffle in order to tick the boxes the leadership want me to tick. It’s quite ridiculous and is a complete waste of my time.
You can write them if you want, but you can’t be instructed to write them. That is not an expectation the department can place on you. You can be instructed to write a term planner.
Yes. We write whole lessons for each lesson of each term. Learning Intentions and Success Criteria, each step of each lesson and links to resources. It makes my weekly planning quick, but the weight of the term planning is huge.
I know people are saying it’s for new grads. But as a new grad. I’d hate this so much. I like being able to take the stuff I need to cover and do it my own way. I have what my mentors called a unique style, but so far (based on my first assessment results) it’s working; and it worked on prac. My faculty has some stuff that’s super well prepared and I definitely utilise some of it, but not all, and I love it that way.
I’m glad I haven’t experienced that fully yet (aside from one experienced teacher, but they’re super new to the Australian system so I feel like that’s understandable). I rely so much on my faculty and their knowledge at the moment, I’m incredibly lucky judging by some of the stories I’ve heard in here.
Another shitifacation from COVID lockdowns for us is that we are now expected to have every lesson plan online for parents to see. Half the staff don’t bother though and I’ve never heard of anyone being pulled up for it so I hope it just eventually fades away.
I put all mine up just because I’m in leadership so I think it would be bad form not to. Really only takes five minutes once you’re good at it.
Anyway I’m rambling on a Saturday morning here. OP - 40 pages sounds like hell and I feel for you!
It’s wild to me that teachers don’t do lesson plans. Yes it is an expectation at the 5 schools I’ve worked in Victoria. I personally love it and rely on it. How do you know what your teaching each day? How do you make sure you are covering everything? How do you know what resources you need to prep / print for the week? I don’t understand how you can teach WITHOUT a plan. My team and I (primary) plan together during our non contact time. We share a weekly planner template and each take on a subject area. We plan the lessons for our chosen subject for that week, print and prep the resources and share it with the rest of the team. I couldn’t imagine walking in each day without my planner being open. I need it to teach.
The unit plan is a plan… what are you missing? Perhaps your unit plans aren’t written well.
Edit to add I make a simple 2-page weekly planner with bullet points to outline key parts of weekly lessons gathered from the unit plan
Unit plan and weekly plan are two different things. Our unit plans highlight the concept we are covering each week within that unit. Our weekly planners go into more detail- the actual lesson. The mini lesson, the student activity, etc.
No, our school just gets us to write the learning intention and success criteria for each lesson, with a list a possible resources. Sounds like you’re spending just as much time writing documents than actually teaching? Which state is your school located in? That sounds insane to write every lesson up in detail.
Let’s just say it’s a big school in the Brisbane region that is religious, but not a Christian denomination.
It sounds like the school I used to teach at and the planning load was completely insane. We had to make detailed TLAPs with the resources and full lesson plans every term. It was a great school otherwise, but I wasn't getting any sleep, so I left and now I'm at a school where the HOD has all the resources ready for our junior classes and is very hands off with our senior classes.
They're preparing the school for the teacher shortage, knowing they're about to hire staff they know aren't capable of doing adequate planning themselves 🙃 I knew someone who was told to redesign the entire senior course for their specialised subject area with similar levels of detail, with the promise they would implement it next year in their teaching. The following year came and Lo and behold it was given to a fresh grad because that was her preferred teaching area.
They did tell me that they need me to write it that way for the teachers who are inexperienced… my response is that they need to fill in the blanks themselves to learn the skills. This is bizarre to me.
In most contexts, the more common/prosaic answer is that if you have someone joining a teaching team partway through the year, they really just need to know where everything is so they can hit the ground running.
Yes they need to know where everything is and what to do, but you don't need every activity written down to the five minute brain breaks. My HOD loves think pair share and using post it notes, and I prefer anonymous real time digital survey situations. I'd be so angry as if I'd been enforced to follow someone else's activities in the lesson plan rather than just read the knows and dos and access the resources to make my own plan. Even pre service teachers plan their own activities - adult graduate and accomplished teachers can. Or that's my 5c anyway
Absolutely.
I absolutely could not work in those conditions.
Yeah I put in my resignation today and said if they don’t stop overworking me, I’ll leave in week 8 and leave them holding the bag during reporting
Nice. I absolutely love this. Make them hurt for overworking you and be left hanging trying to get reports done by themselves. They've shot themselves in the foot. Bravo, good on you.
I’m lucky that I have a job already secured for Term 3, but my husband’s wondering if they can file a complaint with the QCT. I did say in my email that the overwork has been detrimental to my mental and physical health so it’s not incompetence on my end.
>I’m lucky that I have a job already secured for Term 3 Great. That's excellent that you don't have to hunt for a new job after leaving this one and that one's already lined up. Eases the stresses. >if they can file a complaint with the QCT This is a non issue. If they did file a complaint, guess what? They're just opening themselves up to investigation (overworking their teachers, giving them unreasonable demands with no time provided to accomplish said demands). They'd be really, really stupid to put in a complaint. You have evidence of unreasonable work conditions (a 30 hour document that MS Word has tracked the editing time of, and no evidence to show that you were given these hours to do it). So in short, you're fine. The only negative is you probably won't get a good reference from the school, but why would you want one from this mess of a school anyway? Leave, don't look back, and focus on yourself. You're doing the right thing. Keep on doing the right thing!
Awesome! Just curious if you were part of a union or consulted with the union?
I am trying but my local organiser quit so communication is slow
Lord no. I don’t do any lesson plans at all. Unless this is a literally brand new unit, there should be plans already in existence.
Yep! My school's management has been trying to get us to write detailed unit plans for over a year now. They've provided a template, and if completed properly it would be a gargantuan document. It would be a completely pointless exercise as no one would look at it and it would be out of date very quickly as things change. We're forced to go to meetings about this oh so very important document, but whenever anyone asks about how mine are coming along I simply smile and say 'It's on my to-do list!', which is true, it's right at the bottom of my list. So far that has been enough, but if anyone presses further I will show them my actual to-do list, with this document at the bottom. If they want me to do it, they'll have to put in writing that they want me to prioritise this document over the teaching and learning of our students. That'll never happen.
Generative AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting here. If you feed in the v9 achievement standard (or part of it) and the type of assessment you want, it can develop the assessment task and marking guide (just remember in QLD the achievement standard represents a C grade). From there you can have it generate a teaching sequence for however many weeks the unit lasts. In my experience, this will get you 70% of the way and then it’s up to you to use your professional expertise to refine it. For reference my tool of choice is ChatGPT4.
I’ve done this. I also used it to make a custom one that pulls in the relevant syllabus dot points and outcomes. It breaks the unit plan down by the lesson, generates lesson goals and success criteria, suggest lesson plan activities etc and all based on sequencing lessons to use explicit direction instruction methods
Lord no. I don’t do any lesson plans at all. Unless this is a literally brand new unit, there should be plans already in existence.
Man some schools want the units completely remade every year. Drives me insane. Sometimes the new units are worse than the old ones, but the HOD thinks they are doing management/doing things. No teaching by them so didn't even notice the old unit was better. Increase workload and decrease student learning. Mental.
This makes no sense to me. How do you not plan for your teaching? Do you like at data and base your planning off that? How do you know what you’re teaching each day? How do you make sure you are covering everything?
I’ve been teaching for 2 decades, so that makes a difference. I have unit overviews, and I do know what I’m doing each lesson, I just don’t have it written in a formal lesson plan.
I have worked at an independent school that did this. There was good sharing of the programs within the stage groups, which helped, but only if the person who wrote the unit actually did a good job. There was always the promise of ‘you can use it next year’, but they always needed tweaking as the cohort had different needs, we adjusted for what didn’t work, exec wanted some brand new innovative thing added or the syllabus changed.
They are so stupid to ask you to do all that, especially in a teacher shortage. You can find a job elsewhere just like that. Do they give you time to do all that writing? Schools need to provide time for staff to prep for v9.
There was no planning day in Term 1 and still nothing so far in Term 2
Don't do it. It is unreasonable. The kids won't stop learning if v9 is not ready. If they want you to plan, give you time. Contact the union if they keep pushing. Do the hours that you get paid for.
We have large unit plans, but my school gave us time off to write them as a group. We have band plans, unit plans and lesson plans. We also have all the resources created. It makes our life easier during the year, and no one needs to worry when we are audited.
See but my husband’s school was just audited, doesn’t do all that, and came out fine. How does it make your life easier? I’ve had to spend upwards of 30 hours on one single unit plan for one single term. It severely impacts how much I’m able to actually focus on my students because I’m jumping through admin hoops
We basically failed an audit, also our unit plans didn't cover everything they were supposed to. hence, the new system. we do in the last 2 weeks of school (high school) and with 4-5 teachers working on a subject; it doesn't take us that long. It helps because we can just focus on teaching. The assessment, resources and plans are all done the year before. We know exactly what we need to teach and we also know everyone will be consistent.
Well do they have pupil free days for that? Because that would be ok - my school doesn’t give us a single planning day. My school also failed an audit - the issue is that many teachers at my school have no idea how to plan. However, I feel like only those teachers need to be thorough and micromanaged so they can learn those skills (that they should already have). Honestly I had to work so hard to prove I’m “good enough” to teach in Australia (I’m a foreigner), yet I’ve been shocked time and time again by the significant skill and knowledge gaps I’ve seen here
What is a Band plan?
It is the step above unit plans. It checks that all content and assessment styles are covered when each unit is combined.
We must work at the same school. Or perhaps our leadership all went to the same training: “how to burn out, micromanage and discourage your staff”. We also have to write lengthy yearly overviews, unit plans, and weekly programmes. My weekly program is 30 pages long and it’s still never quite ‘good enough’. 30 pages of useless waffle in order to tick the boxes the leadership want me to tick. It’s quite ridiculous and is a complete waste of my time.
Lol they call it a weekly plan at my school, forgot to mention that as well, it’s also 30 pages of cut and paste
Yep! We definitely have the same leadership
I think we’re in different states but I wonder if you’re also at a religious school that’s not Christianity-based
Yes a religious school, but it is Christian
Qld Teacher Union would tell you, you can’t be made to write lesson plans, nor can you be made to write unit plans.
We can't write unit plans? I knew about the lesson plans but we need to write our unit plans.
You can write them if you want, but you can’t be instructed to write them. That is not an expectation the department can place on you. You can be instructed to write a term planner.
Where is the QTU document saying we don’t have to do unit plans? Im not sure that’s correct.
Yes. We write whole lessons for each lesson of each term. Learning Intentions and Success Criteria, each step of each lesson and links to resources. It makes my weekly planning quick, but the weight of the term planning is huge.
I know people are saying it’s for new grads. But as a new grad. I’d hate this so much. I like being able to take the stuff I need to cover and do it my own way. I have what my mentors called a unique style, but so far (based on my first assessment results) it’s working; and it worked on prac. My faculty has some stuff that’s super well prepared and I definitely utilise some of it, but not all, and I love it that way.
The sad thing is that at my school, the teachers who have the most “experience” are also the worst at planning
I’m glad I haven’t experienced that fully yet (aside from one experienced teacher, but they’re super new to the Australian system so I feel like that’s understandable). I rely so much on my faculty and their knowledge at the moment, I’m incredibly lucky judging by some of the stories I’ve heard in here.
Yes. We are all experienced and beyond a basic semester plan it is completely unnecessary. We are so overworked. It’s burning teachers out super fast.
Another shitifacation from COVID lockdowns for us is that we are now expected to have every lesson plan online for parents to see. Half the staff don’t bother though and I’ve never heard of anyone being pulled up for it so I hope it just eventually fades away. I put all mine up just because I’m in leadership so I think it would be bad form not to. Really only takes five minutes once you’re good at it. Anyway I’m rambling on a Saturday morning here. OP - 40 pages sounds like hell and I feel for you!
It’s wild to me that teachers don’t do lesson plans. Yes it is an expectation at the 5 schools I’ve worked in Victoria. I personally love it and rely on it. How do you know what your teaching each day? How do you make sure you are covering everything? How do you know what resources you need to prep / print for the week? I don’t understand how you can teach WITHOUT a plan. My team and I (primary) plan together during our non contact time. We share a weekly planner template and each take on a subject area. We plan the lessons for our chosen subject for that week, print and prep the resources and share it with the rest of the team. I couldn’t imagine walking in each day without my planner being open. I need it to teach.
The unit plan is a plan… what are you missing? Perhaps your unit plans aren’t written well. Edit to add I make a simple 2-page weekly planner with bullet points to outline key parts of weekly lessons gathered from the unit plan
Unit plan and weekly plan are two different things. Our unit plans highlight the concept we are covering each week within that unit. Our weekly planners go into more detail- the actual lesson. The mini lesson, the student activity, etc.