Pacing Guides, Curriculum Maps and Planning Tools
Planning tools for the parts of the year that sit around the lessons: the sequence, the first week, the ten minutes at the start of every morning, and the day you wake up sick.
Build a pacing guide from what you actually have
A pacing guide is a decision about order and time: which topics, in what sequence, for how many weeks. The fastest honest way to build one is to start from the topics you have real materials for, then find the gaps, rather than writing an ideal sequence and discovering in March that half of it was never resourced.
Map the year in four blocks, not thirty-six weeks
Week-by-week maps are obsolete by October. Blocking the year into four chunks and naming the two or three big skills in each survives contact with snow days, assemblies and the reteaching you did not plan for.
Plan the first week separately
The first week is routines, not curriculum, and pretending otherwise is why week one always overruns. Plan it as its own thing, with light academic content that doubles as informal assessment.
Decide your morning work before term starts
Morning work is the most repeated ten minutes of the year, so it is worth deciding once. Pick a rotation you can print a month of at a time rather than choosing something new each night.
Have an early-finisher answer ready
Every lesson produces someone done in four minutes. The extension line in each lesson plan exists for this, and having it written down beats improvising a worksheet you did not intend to give.
Leave sub plans in the drawer now
The emergency plan that helps is the one printed before you need it. Print two or three and leave them in a folder a substitute can find without calling you.