Writing October's Cúntas Míosúil: the first full month, done in 20 minutes

September’s Cúntas is short and forgiving: routines, baseline assessment, a gentle start. October is the real one. It is the first full-length teaching month of the year, it usually ends with the mid-term break scattering everyone’s focus, and the way you close it out tends to become the way you close out every month until June.

So here is a clean way to do it, built for the week either side of the break.

What October’s record should capture

The guidance asks for a record of the learning the children progressed over the month and the learning experiences that supported it. For October that typically means:

• the first full cycle of your core subject blocks, where the September settling-in gave way to real pace
• the first points of deviation from the long-term plan, and October always has them: the block that ran long, the topic that landed early, the sessions lost to the unexpected
• anything you now know about the class that September’s baseline missed, because that knowledge is about to reshape November’s planning

That third one is the quiet value of the October Cúntas. It is the first record written with real knowledge of this year’s class, and the reflection you write now, even two sentences, is the most useful one of the year.

The 20-minute routine, October edition

The routine from our Cúntas explainer applies: mark the plan, record the differences, add a short reflection. Two October-specific notes:

• Do it before the mid-term break, no matter how tempting the alternative. A month reconstructed from memory after a week off is guesswork with formatting. Twenty minutes on the last school day beats an hour in November.
• Name the break. If your school’s October runs three teaching weeks and a break week, say so in the record. A Cúntas that quietly pretends October was four full weeks reads as padding; one that accounts for the real shape of the month reads as a record.

And if your plans already clearly outline the learning, remember the 2026 guidance lets the marked-up plans themselves serve as the Cúntas: we covered exactly what that permits.

In Pleanáil

Open Cúntas Míosúil, pick October, and the record generates from the plans you taught: work covered per subject, curriculum references carried across. Mark what was covered, note what the break and the month moved, add your reflection, export. The sample below shows where you end up.

Download a completed sample Cúntas Míosúil (PDF) to see the finished shape.

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