"As former teachers, this is the partnership we've been waiting for!"
At PlanBee, everything we do is driven by two aims: to improve teaching and learning in schools and to make teachers' lives easier. That's why we're proud to partner with KCS — the first collaboration in our 11-year history.
I'm a former primary school teacher and now a manager and resource creator for PlanBee. To help explain what PlanBee is all about, and why we're excited to be working with KCS, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my teaching journey.
I, like my colleagues, have experienced life at the coal face as a class-based teacher. At PlanBee, we believe that our expertise as teachers and our experiences of actually doing the job help us make the planning and resources that schools and educators need.
What is PlanBee?
PlanBee is the hive of primary resources and lesson planning for schools and teachers. Founded in 2009 by Becky Cranham, a former primary teacher, PlanBee was created to make teachers' lives easier. Today, we have tens of thousands of members who rely on our affordable lesson planning and resources for rich, engaging teaching and learning, which saves teachers time.
PlanBee has thousands of lesson plan packs covering every primary subject. Every pack is created by an experienced primary teacher and comes with detailed planning, slides, activity ideas, worksheets and a range of other printable resources. All our planning is designed to ensure excellent coverage of—and progression through—the primary National Curriculum objectives for Key Stages 1 and 2.
All of my colleagues are former primary teachers and together we're all thrilled to continue our work in primary education. It's truly a pleasure and a privilege for us to continue to provide lesson planning and resources which make the lives of teachers working in schools that little bit easier.
As 'insiders', we're focused on providing quality planning that truly works for schools and teachers and go out of our way to offer our members a world-class service. We know teachers' time is precious and that funds are often limited, which is why we do whatever we can to offer advice and support, provide great value for money and resolve issues that arise quickly.
As for the resources themselves: our experience as teachers is vital for ensuring their quality. Each unit—or scheme—of work takes roughly a fortnight for one of our teacher team to produce. We carefully research facts and information to ensure absolute accuracy and ensure that learning is structured around teaching standards (in most cases, the primary National Curriculum).
Through developing age-appropriate slides, we are able to clearly explain concepts and introduce technical vocabulary as well as devise engaging and challenging differentiated learning activities. We also produce a range of printable resources to support learning.
Throughout the writing process, lesson content is reviewed by colleagues to ensure it's age-appropriate, accurate and engaging. Our teacher team even writes the descriptions of the lesson packs for the website, so we can be sure they're described in ways which are genuinely helpful for educators.
Teaching is a highly-specialised niche sector-primary education even more so. Because it's so unique, we've never quite 'clicked' with other education providers – until now! It's wonderful to be working with KCS, a company that shares our ethos and desire to make life in school a bit easier.
Although we're relatively young (eleven years old) in comparison to KCS, we're looking forward to learning from their extensive experience supporting schools, and believe we have a lot to offer in return. We can't wait to bring our mutual customers an enhanced level of service, quality and value in the very near future.
Watch this space!