Forethought - Planning for Success! Common Problems and Their Causes

Now that teachers are back, what is often asked about at the beginning of the year? Quite often it will be questions about lesson planning. Let’s look at some common questions that teachers have about planning based on the type of lesson plan.

Team planners

The most common questions asked about team planners are usually “how do I add and remove teachers?” and “Why can’t I copy from the team planner to my personal planner?” We will start with adding new members and removing old ones.

• A new team does not need to be created every year. The same team can be used by simply editing who is on the team. This keeps all previous plans accessible to the team.

• Any member of a team can invite other teachers IF the teacher being added has a schedule set up. Often new teachers have not created their schedule yet, and so cannot be on a team. If they go to Forethought, it will prompt them to create it by clicking Next in the bottom left corner.

But why won't it copy?

• Teachers can copy from the Team Planner to their Personal Planner. However, they cannot copy from their Personal Planner to the Team Planner.
• If copying lesson plans from the team planner, please remember that plans will only copy like to like based on the standards that are selected for the course. So in order to copy 9th grade Algebra I from a team planner into a personal planner, the schedule for the personal planner will have to have a course associated with Algebra I standards. You can see what standards are associated with a course by clicking within the course entry and seeing the standards on the right hand side. Be sure not to just look at the title of the course entry, as these can be titled to anything the teacher wants. Click the blue/grey bar and look at the standards on the right. If they are not what the teacher needs, the schedule can be edited by removing the old course, and adding a new one associated with the correct standards or simply delete the schedule and create a new one. Creating a new schedule is pretty quick and ensures the correct set of standards are selected for the courses.

Personal Planners

Several questions are commonly asked about personal planners as well. Let’s look at three of the most frequently asked questions.

• “Can I copy last year’s plans into this year?”
• While it is possible to copy a whole previous year into the current or upcoming year, it is not recommended. Due to holidays and just the general shift of days from year to year, this will often cause plans to not end up where the teacher wants them. We recommend copying a week at a time so that there is more control over where plans go.
• “I teach a different subject or grade level this year. What should I do?”
• If a teacher changes grade level or subject, the easiest thing to do is to delete their previous schedule and create a new one. This will not cause any previous plans to be deleted (plans are linked to the day on the calendar, not the schedule itself) and will avoid the issue where the schedule’s classes are renamed but are still linked to the wrong standards.
• And the big one: “I am having problems copying in my planner. What is wrong?”
• The main thing to remember is that in order for plans to copy, they must have a corresponding course with the same standards in the teacher’s personal planner associated with the date(s) being copied into. So in a nutshell, plans will only copy if they have a course with matching TEKS to copy into. This is true of any copy weather copying from a shared planner, team planner, or copying plans from last year to this year.
• Because teachers can edit the entry with any title that they like, check the standards on the right hand column by clicking within the course entry and seeing the standards that display. If the same course is in both the copied plans schedule, and the schedule that they are being copied into, then the TEKS will match. The same curriculum was selected for both entries and they should copy.