Medium-term Planning
The bridge between the year's overall trajectory and the individual lesson. Medium-term planning operates at the unit, term, or half-term level: long enough that recycling, progression, and skill integration become visible; short enough that learner data from the current cohort can shape it.
What it produces
The typical artefact is a Scheme of Work covering a defined block — six to twelve weeks is common — with a row per session listing topic, target language, skills focus, materials, assessment touchpoints, and links to Long-term Planning outcomes. Where long-term planning fixes the outer shape (which competencies, which exam dates), medium-term planning resolves the middle layer: how a unit on past narratives splits across four lessons, which writing genre is taught in week three, where a milestone speaking task lands. Scope and Sequence is the table view of those decisions; the scheme is the working document.
Backward Design continues to govern. The unit's end-of-block assessment is identified first, the language and skills required for it are decomposed, and the sessions are sequenced so each contributes a recognisable share. Recycling and review are designed in rather than tacked on — a unit that introduces ten target items in week one needs encounters in weeks two, three, and four for any of them to enter productive use.
Why it matters
Lessons planned only at short range tend to repeat what the previous lesson did or drift toward whatever the textbook's next page offers. Lessons planned only at long range stay abstract. The medium term is where progression becomes concrete: a learner who could only describe a process in present simple in week two should, by week six, be linking stages with sequencers and using passives where the genre demands them. That arc is invisible at lesson scale and impossible to trace at year scale.
The medium-term plan is also the level at which colleagues coordinate. Teachers sharing a cohort align on which unit a parallel class is in, where the marked assignment falls, and which skills feature in the upcoming progress test. Lesson Study and departmental review cycles typically operate at this scale, since a single lesson is too small a unit and a year is too large.
References
- Graves, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers. Heinle & Heinle.
- Woodward, T. (2001). Planning Lessons and Courses: Designing Sequences of Work for the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press.