Balance Short Term Planning is an exciting new tool for leaders and teachers to plan their personalised curriculum across each week, 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 week but also allow them to carefully plan in teaching and assessment points, as they wish.
Quick Steps
- Navigate to Planning and click the Short tab
- Click Edit from the calendar view page
- Select the relevant term, week and medium-term plan with the help of the drop-downs, then simply drag and drop parts of your curriculum into the day 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 edit screen to download your plan. You can choose whether you want to create a calendar view or list view PDF, and you can choose whether or not to include notes.
Need More Detailed Help?
Planning Dashboard
Before you begin creating short term plans, we recommend that you create your relevant long and medium-term plans first. Please see this guide for more information about long term planning, and this guide for detailed guidance on how to create your medium-term plans.
To access the Planning module, click Planning on your main toolbar across the top of the page.
When you land here, select the third tab - titled Short. You are then presented with a calendar view of the current calendar week. Once you have assigned objectives to the current week, they will appear in this view and you can create a new learning event from here with them - more on this can be found further down the guide. You can scroll through weeks using the arrow buttons and 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 and medium-term plans are in place before beginning short-term planning. Click here for more information on creating long-term plans and here for medium-term plans.
The first time you access short-term Planning, Balance will take you through a short tutorial explaining how everything works. Please note that you can revisit this tutorial at any time by clicking Replay tutorial in the Edit Plan screen.
To start adding to your short term plan, click Edit from the calendar view screen.
Populating your Plan
Once you have clicked Edit, you will see the following Edit Plan screen:
The page is split into two panels. On the left, you'll see a panel displaying plans and objectives of your curricula. On the right, you'll see daily blocks, with an objective 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.
- Day block view: This allows you to focus more on reviewing what has been placed into each day 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, week and medium-term plan with the help of the drop-downs, then simply drag and drop parts of your curriculum into the day 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.
You can also use the keyword search to search for particular words in your objectives.
The current calendar week is selected by default, so don't forget to change this to a different week, if necessary.
When you drop an objective in, the panel on the right will populate with the information. You can then use the panel on the right-hand side to remove any specific 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 an objective has been assigned to a day block.
The above icon indicates that an objective is unassigned.
Day Blocks
The middle column on the Planning page shows all of your days. Use this column to flick between days, so you can see what's been assigned to them. The number in brackets next to the day block shows you how many objectives that day block is holding.
Clicking on the 3 dots next to a day name will open the actions menu.
The first option lets you reorder objectives that have been assigned to that day alphabetically by module.
The second option removes all objectives from that day (please note that there is no holding area in Short Term Planning, so you will have to start from scratch after choosing this option.)
The third option marks the day as inactive. This is useful for days where no teaching will take place - the relevant day will be shown as inactive in the calendar view and in any reports too.
Please note when you mark a day with assigned objectives as inactive, any previously assigned objectives will be removed from that day.
Duplicating parts of the curriculum
Curricula items can be assigned to more than one day block, which is especially handy for when they need to be revisited a few times throughout the week, or built upon.
Simply click and hold your chosen objective on the left and holding down, drag it over the day block of your choice, it will be assigned immediately.
Weekly Notes
In the Edit Plan screen, you'll see a weekly notes tab on the right-hand side underneath your day blocks.
These are your notes for all of your Medium Term Plans that you've created that fall within the selected week.
Even if you haven't created any weekly notes on a specific Medium Term Plan, don't worry, you can add them here without having to go back to your individual Medium Term Plan. There are also options here that let you know which plans have notes for the selected week and which plans don't have notes for the selected week.
You can also add links to each weekly note.
These notes and links will be shared between your Medium and Short term plans and are accessible from both areas of Balance.
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 edit screen to download your plan. You can choose whether you want to create a calendar view or list view PDF, and you can choose whether or not to include notes. If you select List view, you can also choose to include or exclude any particular days for your chosen week.
You can also download a plan PDF by clicking Create Calendar PDF from the Calendar view screen.
Create New Learning
Once you have populated your Short Term Plan, you can create a new learning event from the calendar view screen. To do so, open the drawer at the bottom and while open, select the relevant objectives on the calendar using the plus symbols.
If you want to add all the objectives in a day to your learning event, simply select the plus symbol in the header next to the date title. Selected objectives will be highlighted with a green border around their card.
If you have assigned an objective to more than one day in the same week, all instances of that objective will be highlighted when it is selected.
Once you have selected all objectives that you want to include, select the relevant class you want to create the learning event for, add a title and date and then click Create. The learning event will be created and you can navigate straight to this new event from the confirmation notification in the top right corner of the screen.
