My FAVORITE teacher planner!
My beautiful 2023-24 At-A-Glance planner just arrived, and I cannot wait to start writing down my ideas and plans for the upcoming school year! I start planning for the next academic school year in May of the prior school year. Now that I know what classes I will be teaching, I can make note of things I want to change or update for next year and things I want to try out. I try to mix things up and refresh my curriculum every year to avoid stale content (and to avoid my tests being passed down to younger classes!).
It might sound crazy to already be thinking about next school year when this school isn’t even over yet, but this is how I plan out my summer activities, my kids’ schedules, Professional Development, graduate courses I’m taking, and any work that I take on over the summer. I am a HUGE believer in PAPER PLANNERS (NOT digital planners) and I truly could not function without my planner. I have been buying this same exact planner for ten years and have yet to find a better planner.
There are many reasons I love this At-A-Glance Academic Planner, but here are some of the best features:
It runs from July - July and has pages for each month (for long-term planning) and each week (this is where I write down my lesson plans)
It has vertical “appointment” style columns for each day. I cannot visualize my week well if each day is horizontal, and the way I divide the columns allows me to easily see each period’s agenda
Each week’s page has a separate column at the end for general notes and reminders
It has about 20 pages at the end for general notes (lined paper and graph grids) and meeting notes
It has a durable faux leather cover that will last you the entire year and more! My planners take so much abuse throughout the year and always hold up
The pages are thick and bleed-proof. They don’t crinkle too much if you spill drops on them (I’m always accidentally dripping water on mine)
Below is what a typical week in my planner looks like. I write down exactly what will be covered in class, including warm-up and homework. If there is something we don’t get to on a certain day, I circle it and draw an arrow to the next day so that I remember where to pick up. I’ll highlight important things (such as items I want to use for my evidence at the end of the year) and also mark down any meetings, parent zoom calls, or other important school-wide happenings.
The monthly view is where I mark down things related to my personal life and my kids’ schedules, including appointments, sport’s practices or games, and social plans/play dates.
I would highly recommend a paper planner, specifically this one, to help organize your life and mark down memories. Given all the devices and screens I need to look at in a given day, it’s so nice to have a hard copy of my life’s plans to refer to rather than having to pull out my cell phone and scroll through it to find something.