As a prepare for the next school year, I am able to reflect back on how I started last year and any changes to those plans. Last year I relied heavily upon my teacher planner. I must preface this with: Yes I know an expensive planner is NOT necessary to be an organized planner, however it sure does add joy to my planning when I can see all the great design and color. Last year, teacher-friend of mine told me that she bought an Erin Condren Planner. Now I had heard of the grand “Erin Condren” planners, however never took the dive. She convinced me to go for it, so last year I purchased my first Erin Condren Teacher Planner; and boy I fell in love. Here is my planner from last year:
The “meat and potatoes” of this planner consisted of the monthly spreads and lesson planning pages. I loved the monthly spreads to organize any meeting or important dates.Here you can see what my May 2016 looked like, as far as meetings go, as the end of the year was approaching. Our last day with students, last year, was May 25. Another great thing about these planners is that all of the stickers you see, came with the planner. So it is just another way to add my own touch of color.
My main hesitation for buying this planner in the first place, was that I was afraid that it was designed for more elementary style of teaching and I would not be able to utilize it to fit my needs. After reading some blogs on how other teachers use this spread I was able to come up with a spread that worked for me. The first column is the same on each page where it lists the days of the week and I had to fill in the exact date. From there, the second column is where I would transfer any meetings from the monthly spread.
The third and fourth columns consisted of my two classes that I taught in the Resource Room. I was working as an intervention specialist half the time so this is where I would plan out those days and lessons to work on particular skills. Now the whole right-hand side of the spread was devoted to my two accelerated math classes.
The right-hand side is where I lesson plan for my math classes. As you can see, there is plenty of room for me to add additional reminders or post-its. Since my position is slightly changing this year, I have already been brainstorming how I may change the way I use the lesson plan spread.
I of course have already bought a new planner for this school year and here I will give you a sneak peek of the planner and the goodies I got to go along with it. I plan of having a whole new post on the new planner once have fully established the layout.
Remember: Be Creative & Think Outside the Box!
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Other blogs that inspired me in my planner layout:
Teaching in Middle School 