NLS Framework for teaching

Planning from the Framework

The organisation of the Literacy Hour is designed to reflect the structure of the objectives. Schools will probably already have school systems for medium- and short-term planning. Implementing the NLS Framework will require a similar structure. You should have three connected levels of planning as follows:

The Framework (given) - What should I teach?

Medium-term planning - termly or half-termly - When should I teach it?

Short-term planning - weekly - How should I teach it?

The Framework provides the content. Medium-term planning should be used to distribute this content to achieve balance and coverage of the objectives over a term or half-term. The more detailed weekly planning should focus on the teaching process i.e. on devising the tasks, activities and strategies needed to teach the work during the five literacy hours. The school's literacy planning procedures should meet the following criteria. There should be:

common formats for planning a balanced programme of objectives for each half-term;
common formats for planning each week's work, derived from the half-term plans. These plans should identify the week's objectives, the texts to be used, the class organisation and the tasks and activities through which the objectives will be taught;
agreed procedures and deadlines for teachers to work to;
monitoring arrangements to evaluate the quality of the planning and its impact in the classroom;
support arrangements for sharing and assisting with planning.

Examples of blank medium-term and short-term planning grids are available to download. These have been derived from experience of planning in the National Literacy Project.