Planning
Spend some time on this every lesson.
Submission: Submitted at the end of the term in the "planning" section of the Folio.
There is no one way to demonstrate effective planning. But effective planning is more than just a basic timeline that you have never looked at once since you made it.
Below are some ideas, but they are by no-means prescriptive.
Weekly/Daily Goals
A high quality planning process will probably include well-articulated goals.
In-fact, including goals in your planning process will greatly improve your ability to reflect and adapt as you will be able to reflect on tangible achievements, or road-blocks.
One way of writing "good" goals is to engage with the SMART goals acronym as explained below.
Of course SMART goals aren't the only way to be goal-oriented, you may already have a different system in place, or want to do a little bit of reading and work out what is the best way for you!
Let's take a look at a pretty standard goal that a lot of students tend to make when asked to do so:
"I will do some work today."
A stronger initial goal might look something like this:
"In this lesson I will finish refining my question and work on my Proposal."
Now, let's apply the SMART goal process to this goal and see how it might be strengthened further:
"In this 90 minute lesson, my intention is to complete the FINER process for my research question, I will give myself 30 minutes to do so. I will then move on to my proposal. I aim to have finished the introduction, developed my topic questions using the template, and had them looked over by Josh by the end of the lesson. Anything I don't get done in this lesson I will complete for homework."
A simpler way of engaging with weekly goals is to use the "what, what, how" method
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What has happened last week?
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What is important for me this week?
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How do I plan to get what I need to get done, done?
To round-out and compliment your weekly evidence of planning you should have some evidence of long-term planning in your folio.
Using a GANTT chart:
A GANTT chart is a great way of making your progress visible, and is something you can refer to quickly to check your progress. It will also help you reflect. If you have planned to be further along than you are, what about that process did you underestimate, or was more complicated than you expected it to be? Do you need to use your goal setting process to implement better strategies to help you stay on track?
Below you can find a neat example of a GANTT chart at work, and to the right you can find a word document with some templates you can use to make your own.
