Annual Plans: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

In preparing to teach each school year, teachers have numerous strategies for getting lessons and materials together. I can only imagine what all of these strategies look like. After reading various chapters from several books, and exploring a website, I am beginning to see how an Annual Plan might come together. It is not a fast way to work, but it seems as though it has some elements would tie in nicely with proven learning environments: clarity, consistency, and cohesion. And while there are some disadvantages to creating an Annual Plan, the advantages seem to outweigh them. Let's think about it...

Developing an annual plan, in which a teacher plans out units to cover the school year, requires the ability to see the big picture. A teacher must look at the NCSCOS and the school calendar and make them come together in such a way that the students leave having achieved the goals and objectives for their grade level. While the school year seems long at times, when looking at it all at once, in tandem with the large number of goals/objectives, suddenly the time seems WAY too short. An annual plan ensures that a teacher has thought about when he or she will teach each goal/objective for each subject.

The annual plan, once developed, enables the teacher to stay on track. It can be tempting to add this cool activity that ties in with a certain unit, but unless something else goes away (and the new activity is meaningful and ties in directly with the objectives), it needs to be filed away until another year. That's not to say that a teacher should not be flexible (I believe flexibility is one of the most important traits of an effective teacher!), but that he or she should trust that the time, energy, and thoughtfulness that went into creating the annual plan makes it stronger than any one-off activity will be. A plan keeps the teacher on task.

One vital service that an annual plan provides concerns integration and interdisciplinary teaching. By taking the time to plan for the entire year, the teacher can see how subjects fit together easily in different parts of the year. The plans for integration can be taken care of ahead of time, so that the integrated units/lessons can be carefully evaluated for learning potential.

An annual plan aligns perfectly with an effective learning environment. In planning all units/lessons ahead of time, the teacher is prepared, and can ensure that all activities are academically appropriate, all materials are gathered, and all procedures are ready to be presented. I predict that a teacher with an excellent Annual Plan feels confident and comfortable heading into school each day.

So, thumbs up for an annual plan. But what disadvantages should I consider?

The most obvious disadvantage in preparing an annual plan is that of inflexibility. After all, I stated earlier that flexibility is one of the most important traits of an effective teacher. How does a teacher change the annual plan when he or she discovers, through assessment, that the students need to spend more time on a unit (or two!)? What has to go? A perfectly planned annual plan might be difficult to tamper with.

Another disadvantage of an annual plan is consideration of the interests of the students. Obviously, the NCSCOS has to be followed, whether the students are interested in all of the individual objectives or not, but teachers still have ways to work student interest into the lessons. With an annual plan in place, how can a teacher ensure that students have the opportunity to explore their interests?

So, thumbs-down, too.

There are probably many other advantages and disadvantages that I don't know enough about to address. In thinking about my arguments for each, I tend to think that overplanning is better than underplanning, so I think that an Annual Plan gets thumbs-up, overall. It is important, of course, for a teacher to keep the disadvantages in the back of his or her mind when preparing the plan.

What about choosing resources at the beginning of making the plan? I am not sure how I feel about it, because on one level, it seems as though that means a teacher is preparing individual lessons first, as opposed to dealing with the big picture. On closer examination, however, if the teacher knows what resources are available, it will be easier to develop meaningful and authentic lessons that tie into the curriculum. For example, if a teacher really wants a certain community member to come in to speak to the class about the Civil Rights movement, and that person is only available in the spring of the year, then the teacher can work the plan to facilitate this visitor. Or, the teacher may decide that teaching the Civil Rights is not possible in the spring, so he or she can find a different guest or other resource.

I am hopeful that we will discuss this idea of resources at the beginning of planning, because even though I can come up with an example of how it might work, I also have questions about it. In some ways, it seems as though coming up with resources at the beginning goes against the idea of 'backwards design' (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006). I am curious as to whether I am unsure of what 'resources' means in this context, or if I just do not understand how they fit in at this point. I will definitely check out the blogs of my peers, to see what they have to say about it!

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill.