Your first September: a planning guide for NQTs

You have the degree, the Teaching Council number, and, somewhere around late August, the moment where it lands: this is your class now. Nobody is taking over after the crit. The planning that used to be an assignment is now the quiet infrastructure of your working week.

Here is what is actually expected of you, and how to set up a planning routine you can sustain past the first burst of September energy.

What is actually required

As an NQT you plan within the same framework as every teacher: long-term plans for the year or term, short-term recorded preparation, and a Cuntas Míosúil at the end of each month. The main practical difference is rhythm: NQTs on Droichead typically write weekly short-term plans rather than the fortnightly plans experienced colleagues use. Check what your school expects, because the school’s agreed practice is what counts, but weekly is the norm while you are in the induction process.

Droichead itself is not an inspection. It is a non-evaluative induction process run by your school’s Professional Support Team, a small group of experienced colleagues whose job is to support you, not to catch you out. Your engagement with planning in line with school policies is part of the process, and your PST will want to see a working system rather than a perfect one.

College planning and real planning are different jobs

The lesson plans you wrote on placement were written to demonstrate thinking to an examiner. The plans you write now have one reader who matters: you, on a wet Tuesday, mid-lesson, glancing at what comes next. That changes what good looks like.

• Short is strong. A weekly plan you can actually consult is worth more than a beautiful document you never open again.
• Objectives first. Know which curriculum objectives or learning outcomes each week serves. Activities are how; the curriculum content is what and why.
• Plan the routines, not just the lessons. In September, how children enter, transition and tidy up will shape your days more than any individual lesson. It is legitimate, and wise, to plan these deliberately in the early weeks.

Build the week around one sitting

Pick a planning time and defend it: many teachers use a fixed slot on Thursday or Friday for the following week, while the current week is fresh. In that one sitting: mark off what actually got covered, carry forward what did not, and set the objectives and key activities for next week. Forty-five minutes, once a week, is a sustainable engine. Sunday-night planning in a panic is not, and the habit you set in September is the one you will still have in February.

The Cuntas Míosúil, without the dread

At the end of each month you record what was actually taught against what was planned. If you have been marking off your weekly plans as you go, the Cuntas is close to automatic: tick what happened, note what moved, add a line of reflection. Do it in the last week of the month while it is fresh. NQTs who leave it until the PST asks for it are writing memoirs, not records.

One more thing: you are allowed to reuse

Your school almost certainly has whole-school plans, agreed schemes, and colleagues whose long-term plans for your class level already exist. Using them is not cheating; it is how schools work. Ask your PST mentor what already exists before you build anything from scratch.

Where Pleanáil fits

Pleanáil was built to take the mechanical weight out of exactly this. It gives you the right curriculum content for your class level ready to select rather than retype, supports weekly, fortnightly and monthly planning, carries your plans straight into the Cuntas Míosúil, and produces clean printouts your PST can look at without you formatting a Word document at midnight. Teachers tell us their first plan takes about fifteen minutes; we wrote up how here.

Start your first year with planning handled.