What to set up before Term 2 starts
Term 2 runs 16 September to 4 December — the longest uninterrupted stretch the three-term calendar gives you. What you do in week one decides how much of it you get to use.
Term 2 instruction runs from 16 September to 4 December — eleven and a half weeks, the longest uninterrupted stretch the three-term calendar gives you. The old four-quarter calendar rarely offered that much continuous teaching time, and what you do in the first week decides how much of it you actually get to use.
Bring the Term 1 gaps with you, by name
If you did an item analysis during the End-of-Term Block, you have a list of competencies that did not close. That list is the single most valuable thing you carry into Term 2, and it has a short shelf life — by October you will remember that "some of them struggled with fractions" and nothing more precise.
Write it down now, as competencies, not impressions:
- Which ones most of the class missed → fold into Term 2 lessons as a starter or a review slot
- Which ones a few learners missed → an intervention list with names on it
Plan the first week to be recoverable
The opening days of a term absorb interruptions: enrolment corrections, sectioning changes, programmes. Front-loading a difficult competency into that week means teaching it into a room that is half-present.
Put something in the first week that survives being cut short — a review of prerequisite skills, a diagnostic, a game that consolidates Term 1. Save the first genuinely new competency for when the room settles.
Prepare one review game per subject, once
ReadRunning a review game when the wifi dies
The most common failure of review games in a classroom is not that they are bad — it is that preparing one takes forty minutes and Monday is Monday.
Prepare them once, at the start of the term, while you still have the exam analysis open and the gaps are fresh. A game with your questions in it, saved and ready, is a fifteen-minute lesson you can deploy any week for the rest of the term without touching it again.
If your school's connection is unreliable — and by the second week of the month, most are — save them to the device while you have signal. They open without a connection afterwards.
Know what the assessment load looks like before you plan
The three-term structure trades four assessment cycles for three, with fewer performance tasks in each. That is a real reduction, but it concentrates weight: with fewer graded pieces per term, any single one carries more.
Sketch the term's performance tasks in week one and check they are spread. Two landing in the same week is a workload problem for you and a fairness problem for learners who were absent.
Set the end date where you can see it
Term 2 ends 4 December, with the end-of-term block running 7–18 December. Backward-plan from 4 December, not from the December break — the gap between those two dates is where every unfinished competency goes to become next term's problem.
Dates are from DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026, the official three-term calendar guidelines for SY 2026–2027. Divisions issue their own memos and local adjustments do happen — check yours before you plan around a specific week.