Balance Medium Term Planning is an exciting new tool for leaders and teachers to plan their personalised curriculum across each term, so they can see exactly what they are teaching and when. This will not only allow teachers to make sure they have full coverage throughout the term, but also allow them to carefully plan in teaching and assessment points, as they wish.
Quick Steps
- Navigate to Planning and click the Medium tab
- Click Create Plan in the top right corner of the screen., give your plan a name and choose the term this plan will be for, then click Save
- To start adding content to your plan, click on the name of the plan in the dashboard
- Select the relevant term, NC year, subject, and category with the help of the drop-downs, then simply drag and drop parts of your curriculum into the week blocks to start planning.
- When you're happy with the plan, it's time to put it in a format you can download - Click Save PDF in the top right corner of the screen to download your plan. You can choose whether you want to create a PDF showing all week blocks or just a few you've selected.
Need More Detailed Help?
Planning Dashboard
Before you begin creating medium term plans, we recommend that you create your relevant long term plans first. To find out more about how to do this, please see this article.
To access the Planning module, click Planning on your main toolbar across the top of the page.
When you land here, select the second tab - titled Medium. You are then presented with a list of your existing plans. The table here shows you the name of the plan, when the plan was last edited and which term each plan belongs to. You can toggle the academic year using the drop-down in the top right corner of the screen.
Starting to Plan
Please ensure that your subject curriculum is finalised and published before you begin setting up your plan. Click here for more information on customising your curriculum.
Please also ensure that your long-term plans are in place before beginning medium-term planning. Click here for more information on creating long-term plans.
To begin planning, click Create Plan in the top right corner of the screen.
This will then open the following pop-up screen.
In this pop-up, give your plan a name and choose the term this plan will be for, then click Save. Your newly created plan will now appear in the medium-term planning dashboard.
Populating your Plan
To start adding content to your plan, click on the name of the plan in the dashboard. This will take you to the planning screen.
The page is split into two panels. On the left, you'll see a panel displaying modules and objectives of your curricula. On the right, you'll see weekly blocks, with a curricula preview panel.
Balance lets you choose between three screen options.
- All Panels - This is the default mode, showing you everything on the page that you'll need to assign your curricula.
- Week block view: This allows you to focus more on reviewing what has been placed into each week block.
- Distraction-free view: This declutters the rest of the page, so you can just concentrate on planning your term with laser focus.
Select the relevant term, NC year, subject and category with the help of the drop-downs, then simply drag and drop parts of your curriculum into the week blocks to start planning. You can select multiple modules at once by clicking on the cards, or, alternatively, singular sub-modules or objectives where required.
Week 1 is selected by default, so don't forget to change this to a different week, if necessary.
When you drop a module, sub-module or objective (both KPI & non-KPI objectives) in, the panel on the right will populate with the information. If you drag and drop an entire module, then all sub-modules and objectives will be carried across with it. You can then use the panel on the right-hand side to remove any specific sub-modules or objectives if required. Click on the relevant objectives to select them, then click Delete # obj to delete them.
Tip! Use the Assigned and Unassigned tabs on the left hand side of the screen to see which objectives you have already assigned and which ones you have left to assign.
The above icon indicates that a single objective or all objectives within a module or sub-module have been assigned to a week block.
The above icon indicates that a module or sub-module contains unassigned objectives.
Week Blocks
The middle column on the Planning page shows all of your weeks. Use this column to flick between weeks, so you can see what's been assigned to them. The number in brackets next to the week block shows you how many objectives that week block is holding.
Your week blocks are determined by your term blocks which can be customised by your Balance administrator if they're not quite right. This is done via Admin > Planning, or by clicking Edit Term Blocks on the main Planning page.
Clicking on the 3 dots next to a week name will open the actions menu.
The first option lets you add notes and external links to your weekly plan. These will be included in your PDF report when you download your plan.
The weekly notes screen looks as follows.
You can add notes by simply typing in the top half of this section, the system saves notes automatically.
To add an external link, click Add a link in the bottom section, give your link a name, include the URL and then click Save. Click Close 'weekly notes' to close the notes section.
Clicking the 3 dots also gives you access to other options for your week blocks:
Reorder by module will reorder your assigned objectives according to the modules they belong to.
Remove all objectives from this week will remove any assigned objectives and let you start the relevant week from scratch.
Mark week as 'inactive' will remove all assigned objectives from your chosen week and mark it as inactive. The week block will appeared greyed out unless you mark it as active again by choosing the relevant option from the 3 dot menu.
Please note when you mark a week with assigned objectives as inactive, any previously assigned objectives will be moved to a holding area to save you from having to start over from scratch.
You can re-assign the objectives to your preferred week from here. Once re-assigned, the objectives will remain visible in the holding area with a tag of which week you've assigned them to.
Duplicating parts of the curriculum
Curricula items can be assigned to more than one week block, which is especially handy for when they need to be revisited a few times throughout the term or year, or built upon.
Simply click and hold your chosen module, submodule or objective on the left and holding down, drag it over the week block of your choice, it will be assigned immediately.
Download your Plans
Now you've finished your plan, it's time to put it in a format you can download.
Click Save PDF in the top right corner of the screen to download your plan. You can choose whether you want to create a PDF showing all week blocks or just a few you've selected.
You can also download a plan PDF by clicking the Eye icon alongside your chosen plan name in the Planning Dashboard.
Renaming your Plan
To rename a plan, simply click the pencil icon 
alongside your chosen plan name in the Planning Dashboard, then enter a new name in the below pop-up and click Save.
Copying your Plan
You can easily share your plan with another Balance user. To do this, go to the Planning Dashboard and click the Copy Plan icon 
alongside the name of your chosen medium term plan.
The following pop-up will appear.
Give your plan copy a title, select the relevant teacher(s) and select whether you want to include any notes and links you added to the plan, then click Save to send the copy to your chosen colleague(s).
Please note that a copied plan is a static copy, and any updates you make to your own plans will not be reflected in your colleague's copy unless they also make those changes themselves.