All About Planning

I report back to work on MONDAY, so I have spent the last few weeks trying to come up with my outline for the year, and some awesome planning sheets.

#teacherconfession I am AWFUL about using a planner!  I LOVE planners, love the way they work, love to decorate them, but I am not good about sitting down and using them.  I have never been good at it, but I am pretty good about sitting in front of my computer.

I started in Vegas talking with my bestie about some awesome apps that she used for math on her iPads.  Her school is 1:1 starting in 3rd grade!!  Then I started outlining a brief sketch of what I wanted my planner to look like as well as some ideas that I knew I needed to start working on.  I love using my flair pens to help me with my planning!

From there I actually started to create what I wanted my weekly planning pages to look like and started working on some plans for the first few days of school!  We start school on a Wednesday this year!!  

I have this big chunk of time on Tuesday when my kids have specials, so I have a big chunk of blank space.  What do you think I should put on my planner in this blank chunk?!

I love typing my lesson plans too because it allows me to share them with you all on Sundays and then I will be able to add products so you can click right to them!!  I can't wait to share my first week of school plans soon!

We are switching back to quarters this school year, which put me in a bit of a pickle when I was trying to plan.  In the past we've had trimester so I spent each trimester focusing on each type of science.  My partner teacher and I were able to come up with what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to plug them in based on the number of weeks in each quarter.

From there we went in and started adding ideas to our plans, once again, just a rough sketch!

Finally, we started working on our long term plans for the school year.  This way we can get a rough idea of when we have breaks, early dismissal days, tests in other subjects, or how quickly or slowly we can move through a subject.  We were able to plan some subjects through the year (handwriting), and some through November.

I know that these are ROUGH ideas, and will depend on our class.  We have built in days for preassessments, so that way we can give the assessment before we begin the lessons.  Then we will have the opportunity to look through our plans and see where we can compact some lesson, or where we need to spend more time.

I hope that you have found some great ideas on how you want to start planning for the future.  I am excited about doing this, because then I won't be freaking out in April trying to figure out how I am going to squeeze in three more units for math, science, religion or any other subject that I "have" to teach!

If you having any questions about planning, please let me know!  I know I am no expert on keeping a plan book, but I am open to sharing what I use and talking about new ways to plan!