Long-term plan template: completed English and Maths samples (free PDFs)

A long-term plan template is the most searched-for and least useful document in Irish primary planning. The empty grid tells you nothing about pitch: how much detail is enough, what a month’s box should actually say, and how the same subject reads differently in September and in May. What helps is seeing finished ones.

Here are two.

Download the samples

• Sample long-term plan: English, 3rd Class (PDF) - the year mapped month by month: oral language topics, poetry, novel and story, phonics and spelling, grammar, writing genres
• Sample long-term plan: Maths, 6th Class (PDF) - strands and topics sequenced across the year, with key concepts and problem-solving focus per month

Both were exported from Pleanáil, and both follow the structure that principals and inspectors are used to reading: laid out month by month, a column per planning heading, concise entries rather than prose.

What a long-term plan actually needs

Whatever template your school uses, a working long-term plan answers three questions:

• Sequence: what is taught, in what order, across the year, respecting your school’s whole-school plans for the subject
• Curriculum reference: which strands and Learning Outcomes or content objectives each block draws on, from the correct curriculum for that subject in 2026/27 (the subject-by-subject guide settles which document that is)
• Pitch: enough detail that a fortnightly plan can be lifted out of any month, and no more

The updated 2026 preparation guidance leans hard toward concise. A long-term plan is a map, not a diary. If a month’s entry cannot be read in ten seconds, it is doing the fortnightly plan’s job.

The September working method

If you are writing yours from scratch in late August, work in this order: whole-school plan decisions first, then the year’s sequence per subject, then only as much monthly detail as you can defend. We wrote up the full September working method for long-term plans as its own guide, and the September planning checklist puts it in context with everything else the month demands.

Frequently asked questions

Do long-term plans change under the redeveloped curriculum? The structure survives, but the curriculum content changes for your school’s enactment area: Learning Outcomes from the new specification instead of 1999 objectives. The Primary Curriculum 2026 guide covers what changes and what does not.

Monthly or termly? Month-by-month is the common convention and what these samples show. Some schools plan by term; the principles are identical, the boxes are just bigger.

Can I edit these samples? The PDFs are for reference. In Pleanáil, the same plans are living documents: the curriculum for each subject is built in, months prefill from your school calendar, and the printed export looks like the samples above with your own content.

From template to tool

A template gives you the grid. Pleanáil gives you the grid with the curriculum already inside it: pick a subject and class level, and the strands and outcomes are there to sequence across your year, with fortnightly plans and the Cúntas Míosúil flowing from the same source. Trial accounts include long-term plans, so you can build your real year.

Map your year before September does it for you. Start your free 30-day trial.