Pedagogical knowledge practices - Timetabling

Explain that in each school timetabling is different. Some schools use cycles of five, seven or even ten days. Discuss your own teaching timetable including how it fits in with your other duties. Explain the flexibility of timetabling. Although initially intended as a one period lesson, some lessons may extend past the allocated time due to interesting discussion or an unplanned activity. Explain the value of deviating from a lesson plan to capitalise on a teaching opportunity that may present itself incidentally. Explain also how easy it is to become side-tracked from the plan if there is no timetable framework to work from. Provide your student teacher with a copy of your timetable on which to do ‘macro’ planning. Provide the sections of work you will expect the student to teacher to cover. Let them practise timetabling the work units. This will go a long way to assisting the student teacher to map timeframes. Timetable the student teacher’s lessons and include planning time at school.

In the visual example below, the student teacher will teach one Grade 11 and one Grade 10 class. The empty blocks can be used for relevant notes on topics, where to pick up in the next lesson, etc.

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