Weekly Planning for SET Teachers

I’m a member of the Professional Support Team in my school and we are following the Droichead Induction programme. This year, many of our newly qualified teachers are in SETeacher positions and we felt that the planning guides online were not very user friendly so we created our own. These are not official templates but they are what work for us.

When it comes to planning, I like a straightforward, easy to follow template which is why we created this. Hopefully other teachers in SET roles or those completing Droichead might find them useful too.

The new SEN model recommends that support is mostly in class however there is still a need for some children to be taken on their own or in a small group to best cater for their needs. (This is why there are different templates depending on the children you’re working with.)

In Class Weekly Plan

This is the 1 page document for in class support covering both Literacy and Numeracy. At the top there is a section ‘Pupils/Groups’ which is where you could write the individual children (or just their initials) that you will be targeting during this in class support.

The learning objectives are taken directly from the curriculum so it is a good idea to ask the teachers you are working with for their termly plans or just an overview of what they intend to cover (on a weekly/monthly basis – where appropriate).

The learning activities are the different activities that you will be doing in class – sometimes this may involve a carousel of activities/station teaching or sometimes you may be working with just one small group of children in the class at a different pace than the whole class. There is also a section for differentiation, assessment and resources.

Individual Plan (Withdrawal)

Some children need to be taken on a 1:1 or small group basis for a variety of reasons. These plans (follow the exact same layout as the in class plan) but there may be different objectives depending on the children e.g. In 5th class the class may be focussing on place value (up to 99,999) and this may be in your in class plan but maybe some children are not there yet and instead are working on numbers up to 999 (which is a third class objective).

Weekly Plan Individual (Other)

This plan may be used for a child who is taken 1:1 for literacy, numeracy and also for other – this could include social skills, fine motor or gross motor skills etc. The other section has targets rather than objectives as the targets are often not curriculum linked – they could include tying laces, throwing and catching a basketball 5 times in a row etc.