Budgeting Your Year

We all know budgeting is the amount of money, time, etc., that has been allocated for you to accomplish your goals. Whether you are budgeting to renovate your kitchen, your spending, or your time for the school year, budgeting and long term planning go hand in hand. 

Each year we are allocated a specific budget of time we get to spend with our students. And we have goals we need to accomplish in that time. As we think about long term planning it is important for us to recognize how much time we actually get. The length of the school year varies from LEA to LEA, and the number of instructional days will vary as well, when you begin to factor in state testing, field trips, assemblies, etc. It is possible you may have significantly fewer instructional days/minutes then you were anticipating as you begin formulating your long term plan. That is the budget you have to work with in that year.

Think about the smaller projects that you have to allocate time. What gets the larger chunk of your budget? When you think about the 5 modules (4 for Algebra 1)  that are part of the Texas Math Solution for each course, how much of your instructional day’s budget is going to be allocated to each of those modules? You will also need to allocate time to appropriately plan for your diverse learners, you should be intentionally planning for emergent bilingual students, and students with disabilities.

As you review the Year At a Glance (YAG),  you will see some information that will help you to figure out the time to allocate for each module.  Each YAG provides the number of instructional days, including Learning Together and Learning Individually, for each topic and the total number of instructional days for each Module.

Once you know the total number of days you expect to spend on each Module, you can look at your calendar and set goals for the end of each module.

Now, it is time to think about the Topics. They are a smaller budget within your larger time allotment. Similarly, the way that we divided up the time for the Modules, you should do for each topic. Moving in the space of your Module plan, put the topics on the calendar so you will have a goal for when each topic will end.

It is important to remember that the time you just allocated for each Module and Topic are goals, but you need to be ready to adjust your allocations. If a concept takes longer to learn then what we planned for, and you spend longer on an earlier topic, revisit your plan and determine where you will take that day from. Be intentional and be strategic in this decision. Think about if/where you can assess after 2 topics instead of every topic or other ways to gain back time if you use more than you budgeted for.