ABSTRACT
Short-term planning for pupils with special educational needs brings the ideas prepared in medium-term plans for curriculum-related group activity (see Chapter 5) into a dynamic relationship with the targets set out in individual education plans (IEPs) to address learning priorities for individual pupils (see Chapter 7). Where medium-term plans and IEPs are effective and of good quality, we would argue that detailed short-term lesson or activity planning in a written form is not necessary for every session of every week. This is especially true where teachers are experienced with both the subject matter they are covering and the pupil group they are teaching. For experienced members of staff, even the reworking and adaptation of tried and tested medium-term plans in order to meet the needs of a new year group of pupils (some of whom will, of course, bring with them new, short-term IEP targets and management challenges but all of whom will have fresh individual needs) may be an informal, internal, largely cerebral process. Indeed, we would argue that attention paid to formal short-term planning as new schemes of work are developed, and the adoption of selected, well-constituted specimen activity plans as exemplary materials within schemes of work documentation (as in the science module examples in Chapter 5), should mean that staff will not have to reinvent the wheel constantly.
