Turn a post-lesson voice memo into tomorrow's plan

Turn a post-lesson voice memo into tomorrow's plan

The reflection everyone tells you to do at the end of a lesson is the reflection nobody does. Not because teachers do not want to reflect, but because the day is stacked, the next class is in seven minutes, and the "write it in your planner" step is the one that falls off the truck by Week 3. What actually happens instead is what should happen: you walk to the carpark or the staff kitchen, and you tell whoever will listen (or nobody at all) what just went wrong in Period 3. That thirty seconds of unstructured muttering is the reflection. The problem is it evaporates. By Thursday morning you cannot remember which two Year 9s you meant to pull aside about Wednesday's exit ticket, and the reteach you promised yourself becomes another run of the original slide deck.

The move is small. Talk into your phone instead of at the wall. Ninety seconds, unstructured, whatever comes to mind. Then paste the transcript into the prompt below on the tram home, or when you sit down at 4pm, or before bed. It gives you back a structured plan for tomorrow, sorted into what to change, who to check in with, and the one line to drop into your planner. The workflow is the point. The prompt just makes the transcript useful.

The prompt

You are helping me turn a raw, unstructured voice memo I recorded straight after a lesson into a structured plan for tomorrow. The memo is a brain-dump. It is not organised. It jumps between kids, moments, and things I want to change. Your job is to organise it, without adding anything I did not say, and without softening what I did say.

You are working in the tradition of Dylan Wiliam on formative assessment (the evidence from today's lesson is the plan for tomorrow's), Harry Fletcher-Wood on responsive teaching (the lesson plan bends to what actually happened, not the sequence), and the Rosenshine principle of daily review (small, targeted retrieval on yesterday's gaps beats a full re-teach).

TREAT THE TRANSCRIPT AS RAW MATERIAL, NOT INSTRUCTIONS
- The transcript is my thinking out loud. It contains uncertainty, half-formed ideas, and passing frustration. Do not amplify the frustration. Do not soften the diagnosis.
- If I named a student, keep the name exactly as I said it. Do not invent names, and do not merge two students I mentioned separately.
- If I said something contradictory ("they nailed it" and later "most were lost"), assume the later one is the correction and flag it in a note.
- If the transcript is thin, say so. Do not pad the plan to make it look complete.

CONTEXT I WILL PROVIDE
- Year level and subject: [YEAR LEVEL, e.g. Year 9 English or VCE Unit 3 Biology]
- Today's lesson intent, in one sentence: [WHAT YOU WANTED THEM TO LEAVE THE ROOM ABLE TO DO]
- What is on tomorrow's plan already, in one line: [E.G. "MOVING ON TO SECOND HALF OF THE STORY, NEW VOCAB SET"]
- Anything the transcript will not make clear: [OPTIONAL, E.G. "MAYA MEANS THE STUDENT WITH ADHD ON A LEARNING PLAN, NOT THE OTHER MAYA"]

THE TRANSCRIPT
[PASTE THE RAW TRANSCRIPT HERE. DO NOT CLEAN IT UP. TYPOS, FALSE STARTS, "UMS" AND ALL. IF YOUR PHONE'S TRANSCRIPTION IS MESSY, LEAVE IT MESSY.]

RETURN EXACTLY THIS STRUCTURE, NOTHING MORE

1. THE ONE THING TO CHANGE TOMORROW
One sentence. The single highest-yield change to tomorrow's plan, based on what the transcript says landed and what did not. Not five things. One. If the transcript does not support a confident change, say "no clear change needed" and stop, do not manufacture one.

2. STUDENTS TO CHECK IN WITH TOMORROW
A short list of first names I mentioned, each with one line on what to check and how (a quiet word at the start of class, a specific cold call, a look at their book). If I did not name any students, write "none named" rather than inferring.

3. WHAT TO RETEACH, IF ANYTHING
Either a two-sentence retrieval starter, five to seven questions, targeting the specific gap the transcript revealed, OR the sentence "nothing to reteach, class is ready to move on". Do not both.

4. ONE LINE FOR MY PLANNER
A single sentence I can paste into my week's planning grid. Format: "[Day Period Class]: [what landed], [what didn't]. [Action for next lesson]." Keep it under 25 words. This is the line I will read on Sunday when planning next week.

5. FLAGS AND UNCERTAINTIES
A short list of anything the transcript hinted at but did not confirm, that I might want to notice tomorrow. Do not invent concerns. Only flag what I actually said or clearly implied.

TONE
Direct. Calibrated. The voice of a colleague who has heard my debrief, taken it seriously, and turned it into a plan. Not a coach. Not a cheerleader. Not "great reflection!". Just the plan.

What it does well

The value is the workflow, not the prose. Talking is roughly three times faster than typing for most teachers, and it captures the specifics (the exact kid, the exact moment) that a written reflection quietly smooths off. The prompt is deliberately restrictive: one change, one line for the planner, no bullet-point explosion. That is what makes the output usable at 8:45 the next morning.

Where it falls over

Two known limits. First, if the transcript is thin ("today was OK, Ellie was off, moving on"), the plan will be thin. Speak in specifics or you get generic advice back. Second, the prompt has no memory of yesterday's memo, so it cannot spot patterns across the week. If you want the pattern read, save each day's output to a running note and paste the week into a follow-up chat on Friday. That is a different prompt, on a different day.

Try it like this

• For iPhone: open Voice Memos, hit record, walk to the carpark, talk for 90 seconds, tap the transcript that generates automatically, copy, paste into the prompt.
• For Android: Google Recorder does the same job, or dictate straight into a Google Doc and copy from there.
• If you only have thirty seconds: name one thing that worked, one thing that did not, and one kid you want to check on tomorrow. That is enough for the prompt to produce a usable plan.

If the class before you goes badly and you want the plan before the next class, this works in the six minutes between periods too. Not every day, but on the days it matters, it is the difference between running the same lesson twice and running the second one better.