Let me just start by saying that I know not everyone will get gained time over the coming weeks. Our primary colleagues won’t see pupils leaving until the end of the year (although the pressure of Sats may be off for some), and in some secondary schools there is a frankly baffling policy of giving exhausted teachers a whole new timetable the second the GCSE exams start.

But for many secondary school teachers, there can be a welcome lull towards the end of this final term. Sun streams in through the window, a fly buzzes lazily around the room and a soporific daze afflicts our thoughts. If we aren’t careful, this time can quickly be lost while we wait for exam results to come in, finally tidy the department stock cupboard or catch up with all those tasks you have spent the year merrily telling your line manager you would “do next term”.

So, if you are lucky enough to get some additional non-contact time in the final term, how can you make the most of it to ensure that the following year runs as smoothly as possible?

1. Make a plan and make it public

The first step is to make sure you have a very clear plan for any time you may have. Decide in advance what you want to achieve (new schemes of work to write, field work to arrange, resources to prepare) and when you will be doing it. Best of all, make this a joint plan with other members of your department and spread the load. Send it to your line manager so they know what you will be using this time for. When they inevitably try to spend your time for you, ask them which of the things you have prioritised they want you to drop to make time for their project.

2. Review the new specifications

Most GCSE courses have now gone through a change of specifications ready for their first exam this June. If you are lucky enough to teach geography, then you may have been teaching a brand-new A-level course for examination this year as well. This is the perfect time to review your curriculum and make changes. Rather than waiting for the exam results to come in and having to frantically replan at the end of the holidays, pause to reflect now on how the course went. Were there any topics that needed to be rushed through? Or others you think you spent too much time on? Which concepts did pupils struggle with? Which resources fell flat? Doing this now means you may still be able to contact your pupils to ask them how they found the course. Not as a form of customer satisfaction feedback (perish the thought!) but as a chance to see what they struggled with in their revision or in the exam.

3. Consider new approaches

This is also the time to think about any new approaches you want to try next year; or ones to embed more fully. You might want to include more quizzes to improve recall, focus on threshold concepts or use knowledge organisers. One problem with trying to introduce something during the year is that we don’t have time to really investigate it properly, and end up with a rushed implementation that doesn’t quite work. Or we find we don’t have the time to create the resources necessary to fully embrace the change we want to make. We can set aside some time in the final term to produce a bank of quizzes that look back over previous topics, create knowledge organisers for the first few units or check how threshold concepts are introduced in existing lessons.

4. Read and reflect

There is a huge amount of valuable research and education writing out there on effective teaching and learning, but once we have qualified, it can be hard to make the time to read it - and harder still to really reflect on it. Instead, we have to wait to be provided with bits and pieces of information filtered through whoever is delivering CPD sessions. This final term will hopefully give you enough time to read through a few articles on pedagogy from Tes, articles from the journals of your subject association or from a body such as the Chartered College of Teaching. There is also a lot of excellent material out there available for free. I suggest starting with something like Rosenshine’s (2012) Principles of Instruction.

5. Clear the decks

Finally, think back to how crazy September was this year and do whatever you can to reduce your workload for when it comes around again. Throw away as much as possible (I sweep everything off my desk every month or so; no one has ever asked for something I have thrown out), clear out cupboards and desk drawers. Make a list of everything you need in those first weeks of term. Photocopy resources, create new ones, get any assessments ready, check on stock you might need. If you can, get class lists into your planner and seating plans ready. Walk into your classroom in September with the calm feeling that comes from a tidy drawer.

Teaching is an exhausting job. Every day we have hundreds of encounters, make hundreds of tiny decisions (and dozens of bigger ones), and race from task to task without time to pause. If you are lucky enough to get some time back now, then you owe it to your future self to make it count.

Mark Enser is head of geography at Heathfield Community College. His first book, Making Every Geography Lesson Count, is soon to be published by Crown House. He tweets @EnserMark and blogs at Teachreal.wordpress.com