How to Draft a Reassuring Year Plan

Is there a Waldorf class teacher anywhere who does not feel mildly anxious or seriously panicked when faced with a new academic year? To scout out its uncharted territory, good planning helps. Here I will show you how to draft a reassuring year plan as an effective tool to combat anxiety, so read on.

When preparing for a new school year, a few initial questions loom large:

• “What order should my next Main Lesson topics take?”
• “How many weeks to give to each Main Lesson block?”
• “What kind of content is right for this age group?”
• “What is the right amount and level of content?”
• “How do I fit it all into the limited time?”
• “When should I do a play and book outings?”
• “Where do I place my Parents’ Evenings?”

Total overwhelm, I know …

But, having been there, I found a great way of dealing with it. And this way could work for you too.

How to draft a Reassuring Year Plan

It is essential to see the entire school year at a glance. The available commercial planners did not appeal to me, so I created my own version from a basic Microsoft Word table. (Yes, I love doing things like that.)

You could design your own template as well, or you can simply use mine. It’s free.

Once you have got the right framework, draft your reassuring year plan by following the steps below.

Structuring the Year

The English academic year is divided into Autumn Term, Spring Term and Summer Term, and short holidays cut them into six Half Terms. Your school year might be different, but the steps are essentially the same.

STEP 1: Begin by counting your school weeks. Then figure out how to distribute them vertically across the grid. Leave out the summer holidays, except for their last and first weeks that absorb any surplus columns. Finally, number the days according to the year and label the months.

Placing the school days between Sundays (at the top) and Saturdays (at the bottom) creates blocks of teaching time that are neatly framed by weekends and holidays:

As any class teacher knows, weekends and holidays are essential for recordkeeping, assessment, evaluation and preparation. They are not free time, but solid abutments that support our work as we fling its arches from week to week and from term to term.

STEP 2: Now put in all the dates that are available before the school year begins: staff training days, festivals, and any regular school events. Colour-coded, these can be listed in an index to the side.

This step will also help you decide when to schedule your Parents’ Evenings. And, as the coming year takes shape before your eyes, those dreaded feelings of overwhelm will begin to recede.

Important: At this stage, make backup copies of your year plan. Do this before filling in any of the Main Lesson blocks. And when your first plan has to be adjusted later, you won’t have to start from scratch.

Long or Short Main Lessons

‘One topic per month’ is a guideline that allows for much variation. Some blocks need to exceed one month, others can be shorter. The number of weeks between two holidays helps us to figure out their duration.

Delving into a subject and staying with it suited my class, so our blocks tended to be long. Once established, the Main Lesson topic’s daily rhythm carried our work like a river and conserved energy.

A Year Plan for Class 1

STEP 3: Now plan your blocks. The Waldorf curriculum’s first Main Lesson in Class 1 is Form Drawing, and this important topic is the common starting point for our highly individual class teaching journeys.

For example, my year plan foresaw a second Form Drawing block at the start of the Summer Term. Revisiting the straight lines and curves of vertical symmetry, this block would be linked to a seasonal Nature Story:

A week of craft projects around our traditional school festivals of Michaelmas and Martinmas followed naturally. I also added two weeks for Advent crafts to round off this long term with manual skills:

Note: As our longest, coldest and darkest term draws to a close, young children are overtired and often ill. That is why, instead of presenting important new material, craft projects and stories are perfect for winding down and preparing for the Christmas Season.

I decided to follow the Michaelmas week with our first Literacy block. As we discovered letter shapes and their sounds, our adventurous Letter Stories would continue in the spring with the lower case letters and The Alphabet.

A third block, at the end of the year, would be for discovering word families and putting together sentences in First Writing.

Unforeseen Challenges

Sometimes a situation arises that makes a change of plan advisable. I had planned to begin our first block of Numeracy after Martinmas. In this way we would have made a start with our three main topics in the first and longest term – but this plan was scuppered by an outbreak of mumps.

Children were absent for a week and more. The class was reduced to half its size, its members varying daily. And so we just kept our letter story going, with repetitions for anyone who recovered and re-joined us.

Certainly, The Numbers are much too important to begin with only half the class present. I moved its introduction to the start of the next term, and we found January’s cold and clear quality perfect for numberwork. From then on, I always matched this month with a block of Arithmetic.

The second block of Numeracy to introduce the Number Space fell into place by itself. And regular morning sessions for rehearsing our school’s traditional Midsummer Pageant were added nearer the time:

Relief! The expanse of the year was now structured in a pleasing overview that remained open to adjustments.

This year plan proved so reassuring that every summer the drafting of its road map was the first thing on my long to-do list. It always gave me a boost of confidence and made me look forward to the next year, excited to work out the daily lesson plans and other details.

This reassuring year plan could do the same for you, so get your free template now:

Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.

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