Simple Planning Hack: Use Templates!

Are you looking for ways to cut down on your planning time? An easy hack is to use templates! Templates take time to make, but they’re worth the investment! Once you have a template made, you can use and reuse an activity over and over, and change out the content. You can take your “winner” activities and integrate them into every unit!

What Are Templates?

I’m sure most of you know what templates are, but in terms of being a busy Spanish teacher, a template is something you create the format of. For example, you can create templates games, worksheets, rubrics, projects, study guides and specific activities.

The trick to creating templates is really 2 parts. 1) Decide which things you do in class that are both helpful for students and engaging. 2) When you know for sure that you have a winner, go back to your original. If you use Google Docs (or other Google products) make a copy of that thing. Label it X Activity Template. Then, create a new folder in your drive and save the template.

Now, every time you want to use something similar, all the formatting has already been done! Using a template saves so much time!

Templates in Action

I use a template for so many things. I hope my list won’t bore you! But the purpose is to show you how easy it is, if you can be disciplined enough to make a template and save it somewhere where you can find it again the next time you need it!

Click HERE if you would like a Free Study Guide Template to get you started on your templates journey! This is my Free Resource Library, and you may find some other useful things there too!

And without further ado, here are things I have templates for.

Anything I use in most units:

Unit Plans Outline (shown above)

Study Guides (Shown above- click the link to get yours!)

Class Discussion Charts

Note-taking charts

Rubrics

Listen and Respond Charts

Project instructions

Do Now Chat Cards

Guided Conversations

Game Templates:

Review Games

BINGO

Reading Scavenger Hunts

Dame el lápiz

Don’t Get Overwhelmed!

Start today! The next time you sit down to plan, identify something you can turn into a template. You don’t have to go back to everything you’ve ever done and make templates NOW. : ) Create your folder where you can save your templates. Every step is progress, and before you know it, you will have a full folder of ideas that will make your planning a breeze!

Hidden Benefit of Templates

We all can see the obvious benefits of spending less time on planning and creating. But there was another benefit of using templates that I didn’t anticipate.

Once I was able to plan and create faster, it gave me more time to research, read about and learn about new ideas. How many times have you heard about something and thought, “That would be cool to try!”, but never did because the time just wasn’t there to implement this idea? Using templates has made me a much more creative teacher and broadened by toolbox of activity types immensely! That’s a win for us and a win for our students!