Help

How to get the most out of Planline, and what to do when something isn't working.

Can't find your answer? Email apps.southam@gmail.com. A real teacher reads every message.

Getting started

Enter your school email on the Planline home page and we'll send you a six-digit code. That sets up your account and starts a 30-day free trial with no card needed.

The first time you sign in, a setup guide opens. Quick Start covers the essentials: your class, term dates and bell times. Advanced setup adds your curriculum version, colour theme, teacher aides, standard week and your school's collaborative plan. You can skip any step, and run the guide again later from Settings → Guided setup. Running it again keeps everything you've already entered.

Signing in

From the school plan to your week

1. Bring in your school's collaborative plan

Go to School plan. Choose a Word, Excel, CSV or PDF file, import straight from Google Drive, or paste the text. Planline sorts what it finds by term and learning area and shows you a table to check. Untick anything you don't want, fix anything it guessed wrong, then choose Bring these in. If your team doesn't have a plan in a file yet, Download a blank template gives you one to fill in.

Scanned or photographed pages can't be read, and neither can some PDFs. Planline will tell you, and you can paste the text instead. Your file is read on your own device and is never uploaded.

2. Term topics

Term topics has a card for each learning area each term. Anything from the school plan shows at the top with a Use this button. Add what the class should come away with, and any notes.

3. Unit plans

On Unit plans, Start one for every term topic creates a unit for each topic in one go, or Turn this into a unit plan does one at a time from Term topics. Each unit holds its WALT, outcomes, how you'll assess it, and its lessons in teaching order. Maths units offer Build from Chalkline and English units offer Build from Codeline: tick what you're teaching and the lessons are added for you.

4. Your weekly plan

Click an empty block in the weekly plan and choose Take the next lesson from a unit. The title, WALT and success criteria come with it, and the unit keeps count of how many of its lessons are timetabled. Click a lesson that's already planned to open its full lesson plan.

Lesson plans and WALTs

Choose a WALT in this order: strand, focus, curriculum link, then the WALT itself. Its success criteria appear as ticked boxes. Untick any that don't fit, and add your own underneath. WALTs for your year levels (set in Settings) come first. Write my own adds a WALT to your list and keeps it for next time.

A lesson plan has three buttons: Edit, Open in new tab (useful for a second screen, and it updates when you change the lesson) and Print. You can attach Google Drive files or web links to any lesson.

To switch to the refreshed curriculum strands, go to Settings → Curriculum version → Automatically migrate to the new strands. Lessons you've already planned keep their links.

Chalkline and Codeline

Chalkline (maths) and Codeline (structured literacy) are free websites for New Zealand teachers, made by the same teacher as Planline. Planline has their lessons built in:

• In a maths unit, choose Build from Chalkline. In an English unit, choose Build from Codeline. Pick the year level, tick what you're teaching, and the lessons are added to the unit in order.
• In a lesson, choose a Chalkline lesson or Codeline lesson and its lesson plan carries that tool's own content: the WALT and success criteria, teaching sequence, checks, word lists and dictation.

Chalkline covers Years 0–8 and Codeline Years 1–8. More free tools for teachers are at danielsoutham.co.nz.

Your year

• Standard week (Settings): your usual timetable. Every new week starts from it, and you change only what's different.
• Year (Settings): term dates, teacher-only days and holidays, events, release days, meetings and duties.
• Bell times (Settings): the shape of your day, and which days you teach.
• Teacher aide: who's in and what they're doing. It shows on every weekly plan.
• Assessments: schedule them by term and week. They show on the weekly plan, and the bell reminds you before they're due.

Release days (CRT, EOTC, leadership and so on) don't blank out your lessons. They stay in the plan marked for the reliever, and those lesson plans open with a banner saying a reliever is teaching.

Sharing with relievers and leaders

Choose Share in the green bar, name who the link is for, and pick how long it lasts: 48 hours, 7 days, 14 days or 10 weeks (a term). Anyone with the link can read your weekly plans, lesson plans, unit plans and term topics, but can't change anything. Each lesson's sequence and notes go with it. Your unit plan and term topic notes stay private.

The full link is shown only once, so copy it straight away. From the same dialog you can extend a link, see when it was last opened, or turn it off. Turning it off stops it working immediately.

Devices, syncing and offline

Sign in with the same email on each device and your planning follows you. Changes save to your account by themselves. The Account button shows whether everything is synced.

Planline keeps working with no signal. Keep planning, and your changes sync when you're back online. If the same plan was changed on two devices without syncing in between, Planline asks which version to keep rather than guessing.

To install Planline like an app, use the Install button. On an iPhone or iPad, use Safari's Share → Add to Home Screen. Updates reach the installed app by themselves.

Seven colour themes live in Settings → Colour theme. Your choice follows you to every device.

Printing, Word and backups

• Print prints the week, or the day in By day view. Lesson plans print on their own, one A4 page each.
• Word exports the week as a Word document.
• Back up saves everything to a file on your device. Restore brings a backup back in. Keep a backup before any big change.

School plans

A school plan covers up to 5, 10, 20 or 30 teachers. The person who pays takes one seat and adds colleagues under Account → School teachers. Each colleague signs in with their own email address and keeps their own planning; nobody can see anyone else's unless they share a link. See Billing for prices and changing plans.

Troubleshooting