Why I've grown to love booklets

There are a lot of things that I've changed my mind on since starting teaching, and booklets is one of them. I used to think they were likely constrictive and prescriptive, that they would force me to do things a certain way in my classroom, regardless of the situation in front of me. That they took ages to print. That the students would lose them and it would be annoying. 

And then I wrote my own by accident. How do you write a booklet by accident? I hear you ask. It goes like this:

1. Really challenging year 9 who can't access the current curriculum and will really struggle to access GCSE content in year 10, so we decide to rewrite said curriculum to provide as much support as possible without losing the breadth of study that is so nice at KS3.
2. Students miss a lot of learning because of poor behaviour and low attendance.
3. Because we're using a bespoke curriculum there's no textbook that we can just give the students (and a lot of textbooks are not great anyway).
4. I end up writing my explanations and questions onto a series of sheets that can be given to students so they have access to the content even if they miss a lesson
5. Realise I've just written a booklet.

Now, these booklets (I think I wrote three in the end) were only okay - they weren't a collaborative effort, there was no departmental review or QA, there has not been any reflection and improvements made. But they were still super useful. I've since moved to a new school who are well established with their booklet usage and because of this there are extra benefits!

In no particular order: 

1.  You don't have to spend ages thinking up good questions before each lesson. Yes it would have been time-intensive the first time, but not any more so than writing the questions each lesson at a time. When I wrote my first booklet, I pretty much wrote it one lesson at a time, but that was just me on my own. If I was working with a team, it would've been much quicker. Rather than having all of your year 9 teachers writing their own questions, which for the same lesson are going to be pretty similar, share the load. Instead of having five teachers writing five very similar questions for the same lesson, why not have them write the questions for five different lessons - you've spent the same amount of "man hours*" but got more to show for it.
2. They force you to think of the whole topic/unit/sequence. We know it's important to know where the students have come from in their, to use a sickly term, "learning journey", and where they are going. When you have a booklet, it's very very clear what comes next, and it's equally easy to flick back and check what they've already done. 
3. You don't have to think in terms of 50/60/100 minute blocks. If you finish a section of learning, you can just turn the page and move on. There is no more of that "balls, they grasped that way faster than I thought they would and now I have nothing for the next fifteen minutes, okay, let's do some filler" You just move on. 
4. You can use the expertise of the whole team. In a department, there will always be a range of skills. Some people have oodles of charisma and excel in the delivery, others will be really good at phrasing things, some people will be chemistry specialists or physics specialists, or have a stock of really interesting hinterland stories. When you plan on your own, you don't get to use this expertise as much. When you all contribute to writing a booklet - either directly writing it, or QAing it, or just reflecting on its implementation - your students get some of the benefit of all that expertise, not just yours as an individual.
5. Students who miss content can catch up easily. All you have to do is say "we got up to question x". It also puts the onus on catching up on the student instead of the teacher - I don't have to go out of my way to find them something relevant, maybe lending them a copy of the textbook, or whatever. I just say "we're [here]".
6. Less emergency printing. Again, takes a bit of time in the first instance, but once they're printed, that's you done for two, four, even six weeks. In the past month, I've printed a couple of assessments, a bonus worksheet for a cover lesson, and three seating plans. I'll need to print a new booklet for year 8 in the next week or so, but everyone else is good for a while.
7. They are more bespoke [better??] than a textbook. Some textbooks are really bad. They never have enough practice questions in them, the content is either abridged or expanded so each topic fits on a double-page spread, they often contain outdated examples because every time there's a new spec the companies just cannibalise their old books rather than writing anything new, the sequencing can be really weird, sometimes they add the most bizarre extra stuff [Looking at you Exploring Science Working Scientifically with your reference to gas chromatography in the y7 book, and a whole section on sea breezes in the y9 book]. With a booklet you can tailor it to your students, you can add as much practice as they need, you can sequence things sensibly, you only add the relevant content.
8. Saves you from terrible Doorknob Lessons. A Doorknob Lesson is one you plan frantically in your head with one hand on the doorknob, as the class is entering the room. They're few and far between, but they do happen. Sometimes you think "I can plan that at lunch", and then at lunch you get called into an urgent meeting, or a child is sick, or the photocopier isn't working, or any of the other things that can and do go wrong in schools. With a booklet, you already have the questions, a bit of an explanation, even if everything has gone pear-shaped, you still have "a lesson". It might not be the best lesson you could deliver, but it's better than something you're thinking up on the fly as you welcome 30 small humans into your classroom.

All this being said, there are some things that are important for lesson delivery via booklets.

1. You need to know what's in them. Whilst they can save you from particularly terrible Doorknob Lessons, you don't want ever lesson to be winged like that. The more familiar you are with the booklet, the better your lesson will be.
2. They do need to be semi-living documents. You do need to be able to put forward changes if needs be, and there should be collaboration involved in their production. They should also be reviewed after use - what worked, what didn't, what sort of worked but had to be changed a bit. Over time, it would be possible to build something really amazing.
3. There needs to be flexibility in their usage/they shouldn't be seen as a replacement for curriculum. Not every class is the same. Some students will need more scaffolding or support, whilst others will benefit from being stretched more. If you have to use the booklet exactly as is, with no adaptations or deviations, then you scupper you teachers. I teach 8Sc2 and 8Sc3. With set 2, I've moved fairly quickly through the booklet and have given them some more challenging tasks, beyond what is in there. With set 3, I've moved much slower, I've revisited things a lot more. If I was expected to deliver the booklet as written, it would be a disaster for both classes. Booklets are a tool, not the end product.
4. They need to be well-formatted. In the same way that exam papers are formatted so the information and the questions are in one view, your booklets should be the same. The students should not have to flip the page to see the data for a calculation, or a diagram or whatever. The numbering needs to be checked carefully - it's really annoying saying "do up to question 19" when there are two question 19s for some reason. I would also argue against having space in the booklet to do the work - some students need more space than others, it's just a waste of paper. In my opinion, the booklet should be the content in brief, followed by a series of questions, repeat for each learning chunk. Students do their work in their books and then they can take up as much space as they want.

All in all, I really like using booklets, and I think if I ever went to a school that didn't use them, I'd probably implement them. Or end up making my own again.

*Using "man" in the sense of humankind, not as in menfolk. 
Apologies for the weird formatting - Blogger has a mind of its own this morning