Hi there,

 I'm in my second term as an NQT and find I am still spending a long time planning. I reckon that I create about 90-95% of my own resources (PowerPoints, worksheets, explanatory handouts, flashcards and "playing" cards) and spend perhaps 45 minutes to an hour or per lesson... At first I didn't question this too much as I am a very creative person, but I find that it is really sapping time and energy now. I am well aware of the fact I could not even manage this prepping workload were I not part-time (3 days a week). However, I find I also feel guilty if I do use other stuff from elsewhere, as though I should be using my spare time when not in school creating my own resources...

So my question is: How long do any of you spend on average planning and prepping each lesson? And what roughly what percentage of your resources do you create yourself?

 Thanks!

I occasionally create things myself, but it's pretty rare bar the odd powerpoint which takes about 10 minutes (they just contain notes I want copied down and questions to go through as a class, no thrills). And even then I often teach without one.

If I want questions I generally use the textbooks, if I want more exciting activities I'll use TES, the department resources or a couple of good resource websites I used when training. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me the most important thing in a lesson if the kids are to learn isn't the activities themselves (assuming you have pupils who can concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time) but the way you tailor your explanations of the material, predict and deal with misconceptions and answer pupils questions in a way they will understand. Obviously its nice to throw out some bangs and whistles occasionally, but I'm never convinced it really helps learning that much.

I use whatever I think is best for for those pupils. A lot of the time this means making something myself, but it also includes recent textbooks, worksheets/activities from colleagues, ideas from websites and twitter, TES Resources, things I've made in the past, and even a 20+ year old textbook which I use for a few particular exercises!

I save everything I do and then tweak it next time round. Sometimes something I've used for a top set Year 7 will be a great starting point for a bottom set Year 10 class. Saving everything in a an easy to find way is key I think.

I'm also doing my NQT year and find myself making virtually everything ... It IS time-consuming but I'll be glad to be able to reuse things if I can next year.

 I'm starting to use other resources occasionally and I don't think anyone should feel guilty about this - it doesn't mean you're not doing a good job and, personally, I'd be thrilled to think that one of the resources I've uploaded (more to come) has helped someone out.

 My problem is that I put quite a lot into my powerpoints, so you may just want to consider making them less pretty/perfect?

 Best of luck to everyone - come half term I think we're technically halfway there!

DBizzle:

I occasionally create things myself, but it's pretty rare bar the odd powerpoint which takes about 10 minutes (they just contain notes I want copied down and questions to go through as a class, no thrills). And even then I often teach without one.

If I want questions I generally use the textbooks, if I want more exciting activities I'll use TES, the department resources or a couple of good resource websites I used when training. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me the most important thing in a lesson if the kids are to learn isn't the activities themselves (assuming you have pupils who can concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time) but the way you tailor your explanations of the material, predict and deal with misconceptions and answer pupils questions in a way they will understand. Obviously its nice to throw out some bangs and whistles occasionally, but I'm never convinced it really helps learning that much.

I would disagree to be honest: your resources, made yourself, are tailored far more precisely than any on websites, TES or textbooks. You should definitely be thinking about how you put the objective across and how you can measure progress but I would expect most staff to be personalising their resources to their classes. x