ACTION PLAN TOOL
Purpose creating an action plan for the school partnership during international visits
Duration about one hour
Participants teachers involved in the partnership and/or international visit
Description
1. Briefly explain the purpose of the meeting (create an action plan) and that we will use some
visual tools. If possible, send a brief summary of the schedule to participants beforehand
(use post-its – especially useful for quieter participants). (5 minutes)
2.
Use The Bridge exercise1 – to identify where we are, where we want to be, and how to get
there (a longer explanation of the Bridge exercise is in this folder). (30 min max)
3.
Every participant reflects (alone or in pairs) about the personal and school resources they
have in order to reach such goals. The resources can be written on post-it notes. (5 minutes
max)
4.
Action planning (30 minutes max)
Steps
1. Ask the participants to develop a table including tasks,
resources, date and responsible individuals across the top.
2. Then complete the details for all the tasks that will be
required to achieve a particular project objective.
1
Adapted from ‘Participatory approaches: A facilitator’s guide’, VSO
Tips / Comments
Ask participants to be as specific as possible in order to keep goals realistic. For example, the section
‘resources’ could identify teachers, classes and material for every action.
5. It is possible to double check the action plan using the SCHEMES method – for every action,
identify (20 minutes max – it shouldn’t be needed if the action plan identified resources in
detail):
Place
Cash
Helpers/people
Equipment
Material
Expertise
Systems (if applicable)