Year Pacing Planner

Most CTE burnout comes from planning the plane while flying it. This planner gives you the skeleton to hang daily lessons on: units, rough weeks, where the big projects land, and built-in slack for the inevitable schedule chaos.

What’s inside

• A year-at-a-glance grid (units by weeks)
• Semester breakdown templates
• A single-unit planning page
• A worked example so you see how to use it

Why teachers love it

• Plan once, teach from a skeleton all year
• Build in slack for assemblies and snow days
• Editable, so it flexes to your course

How to use it in class

Block out one planning period before the semester starts, ideally the week before pre-service days. Pull up the year-at-a-glance grid first and drop your units into their rough weeks, working backward from breaks, testing windows, and the dates you already know will get eaten by assemblies. Then flip to the semester breakdown template and rough out which weeks carry the big projects versus the lighter skill-building stretches. Leave a few blank weeks on purpose. Once the skeleton is set, use the single-unit planning page to sketch out just your first unit in detail, since that is the one you actually need ready on day one. Everything after that gets filled in as the year unfolds, not before.

Questions teachers ask

Is this really free?
Yes. Everything in the Free Library is free for teachers. Enter your email once and we send you a single password that unlocks every freebie.

What formats are the files in?
A print-ready PDF plus an editable Word (.docx) version of the fill-in pages, so you can make it yours.

What grade levels is it for?
Built for high school CTE (grades 9 to 12), and easy to adapt up or down.