Tag Archives: Lesson Planning

DIY Teacher Planner/Binder

Something you may not {or may} know about me, is that I am obsessed with planners. I love them. I love creating them and using them to help manage all the daily madness. As educators a well organized planner is an essential, must-have for our line of work.

Cover-Pic

When it comes to choosing your planner for the year, you could use the standard teacher planner that gets passed out every year at school, but those are usually pretty darn boring if you ask me. So the solution for me has always been to create my own.

As a fun summer project, I worked on creating a planner for teachers and another planner for coaches to support your DIY Planner style. They have all the planner essentials you need, yet leave you with room to build out from there. You can find these different Teacher Planners in my shop.

Or if you’re interested in a weekly calendar that’s already set up and ready to go, definitely check out The Time & ToDo Planner.

Alright, now let’s take a look at how you might set yours up.

For my planner I chose to use a Discbound notebook, which seem to be all the rage these days and for good reason! They’re sleek and sophisticated, highly customizable, fold neatly in half, and lay flat when open. Love it! You can check out the Circa notebook system by Levenger, or the Arc notebook is a slightly less expensive option yet just as good.

On the inside I added a pad of gotta-have sticky notes, some page tabs, and a few paper clips. I also had my cover laminated to spice it up a bit!

The Teaching Planning Kit has three different cover options for you to choose from.

 

I used white tab dividers, some washi tape, and my label maker to create sections for “Calendar” and “Lesson Plans”. Two essential sections for every teacher!

tabs

Begin your calendar section with a Year at a Glance spread. Use it to note important dates for the year, goals, and/or student birthdays.

Behind the Year at a Glance, let your two-page Monthly Calendar spreads for the year begin. These August 2016-July 20147 calendar pages will serve as your Comprehensive Calendar and it is going to be one of your most important tools in your Teacher Planner. A two-page spread is a must, since this is where you will record all of your hard deadlines, events, and meetings for both your school and home life. Yes, both! If you value getting a pizza and watching The Bachelor on Monday night, you’ve got to block that time off and work around it the best you can. Not that I watch The Bachelor or anything…

Behind each month are two lined pages for notes.

notes

In the section for your lesson plans, I created a weekly lesson plan template you can use to get all your big ideas down. There are 5 planning spreads (print as many as you need!) in each Teacher Planner, designed to be printed front-back, so you can either print for the year, or a month at a time. It’s designed to be flexible!

52 Weekly Planning Spreads in PDF

weekly-plans

Lastly, I used some sticker paper to make a label for the folder in the back. This “Inbox” is where I’ll collect any loose odds and ends that come my way.

inbox

Now that you’ve got the essentials taken care of, the rest of the planner is up to you. You might add a section for grades, meetings, general reference, whatever you need!

A few notes on printing the Weekly Lesson Plans in your Planning Kit or Teacher Planner. For easier viewing and printing, I recommend using Adobe Reader which you can download for free here. You can also use Preview if you have a Mac.

Once you open the Planner PDF in Adobe you should see a screen that looks similar to this:

Screen Shot 2013-07-05 at 1.34.35 PM

The weekly lesson plans are set-up for simple duplex/two sided printing. If you have a duplex printer, you’re good to go. If not, no worries. I don’t either, so on my printer I first printed the “odd pages” by adjusting the “Subset” selection in the print box. The paper I used for printing is standard letter size, 8 1/2″ x 11, 98 bright and 32 lb. from Staples.

Screen Shot 2013-07-05 at 1.37.30 PM

After the odd pages were printed I flipped them over, inserted them back into the printer, and changed the “Subset” selection to “Even pages only.” Now, here’s what you need to make sure to do: print out a few test pages BEFORE printing out the entire document!  Kind of like the old adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” Or you can take a shortcut and just head to Staples.

OR don’t forget about your Time & ToDo Planner option either. You’ll save on the cost of printing, and be ready to go.

Alrighty then, let’s get this Planner party started! Here’s to an organized and awesome school year.

Happy Planning!

ms-houser

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Lesson Planning and Creating a Teacher Plan Book

Lesson planning.  Every teacher’s got to do it.  Not only do we have to do it, but it’s important that we do it well.  Well crafted lesson plans create a direction and a vision for your day.  They help you feel less stressed and more confident.  They’re there for you to grab onto when your classroom is buzzing with activity and you can’t remember what you were going to do next!  Don’t get me wrong, as teachers we should always be willing to step away from our lesson plans and steer our instruction in a different direction when our planned vision takes a turn in a different direction or our students show us they are in need of something else or something more.  However, thoughtful lesson plans set the tone for the day.

Lesson planning is a very individual process, taking on a number of different shapes and forms.  In this post, I’ll share a few of my own ideas and resources for creating daily and weekly lesson plans as well as how to organize them.

Lesson Planning Styles

Before my first year of teaching began I drove myself to the local teacher supply store and bought myself a shiny new teacher plan book with pencils and lined paper decorating the front. I had visions of myself sitting at my desk with my plan book, neatly writing in my lessons for the day and week. Well my vision didn’t manifest itself as I thought. I quickly found that the traditional teacher plan book was not going to work for me. There were too many details I wished to include in my plans that just wouldn’t fit in the tiny spaces provided. I also wanted to adjust the one size fits all boxes to fit the needs of my schedule. I wouldn’t necessarily turn and throw your teacher plan book out of the window however.  They make perfect sense when you want to jot out an outline of your week to quickly refer to. Although like I did, you may come to desire the need for more freedom and flexibility with your plans. If so, below are a couple of daily lesson plan templates I created to better fit my needs.

Download this daily plan template (.doc)

Download this weekly lesson plan template (.doc) – adapted from Beth Newingham

While some of us may prefer to use paper and pencil to plan, others may be anxious to check out ways to use technology.  I was one of those anxious teachers last year and so I tried out  Planbook by Hellman Software.  In the beginning, I spent much more time than I would have liked just figuring out how to best use this program rather than actual planning.  Once I figured it out though, I found there to be many benefits.  One being that after you create your plans you can easily print them out to have for easier reference.  I also liked how I could easily switch from a weekly to a daily view.  While I enjoyed this style of planning for awhile, I came to find that it just wasn’t for me.  It turns out that I do my best thinking and planning when using paper and pencil.

Planbook by Hellman Software

Creating a Teacher Plan Book

If you have chosen to go the paper and pencil route, you may find it useful (and fun!) to create your own teacher plan book.  Here is how I made mine:

First
Grab a three ring binder.  You might like to choose one with the plastic covering so that you can create a personalized cover.

Second
Decide what tabs or sections you would like to include.  I always include a calendar, weekly plans, daily plans, and notes section.  I also liked to have a pocket folder in the back to collect miscellaneous papers so that they don’t end up somewhere else.


Third
Add a small three ring pencil bag in the back.  This can hold sticky notes, extra pens, or note cards that you can use for planning when you are not near your desk.

Now that you have created a place to organize all of your lesson plans (whether it be online or in your own plan book), you may find that your life feels a bit more complete!  You’ll also have a book (online or off) of thoughtful and organized resources to use for reflection and hopefully even preparation for next year.

Happy Planning!
Kristin