Organization is my favorite word. Knowing where you are going in your school year is the best way to set yourself and your students up for success. Not only does it help cut down on your planning time, but it also ensures that you are hitting all of the standards and units in your programs before you reach the end of the year. I have taught with and without a year plan and I would say my years with are FAR more successful!
I have created a planner a variety of ways. In the more recent years I have used this year planner from Dragonflies in First. Traci thought of everything you need in a year plan and included it in her product. I printed the planner out poster size and it was very helpful to use. My only trouble with it was that it was in Excel. As computer savvy as I like to think I am, Excel is just not my favorite. Traci does give you VERY detailed directions and makes it user friendly though!
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| This is what one of my planners looked like. I know it looks hard to decipher…I printed it out much larger! |
This summer I was ready to try something new. My friend Jill from First Grade Made must have been reading my mind. She wrote about her year planner and posted it as a freebie in her store here. I was inspired about it and decided to use her template to create mine this year.
With her template, my year planner is one page per month. I keep it in my planning binder and use it to plan both monthly and weekly. Once a month I sit down with the planner and my lesson plans (I keep those on my Google Drive) and fill in all of the curriculum programs that I am supposed to hit. Then, weekly, I fine-tune the plans by adding in more details and adjusting if necessary.
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| My year planner page for this month! |
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| A glimpse into what my lesson plans look like on Google Drive. |
Sitting down to create a year planner seems like a daunting task. It is and it isn’t. If your school is similar to mine with a lot of programs to implement – it simply means getting out all of your binders and plugging in the units. This usually takes me a few hours to do. You do not need to be super specific – you just need a general idea of where you are going. I often find that I have weeks here and there where I get to plan to do more fun seasonal curricular things because I know I will make it to the end of the year in my programs. If I didn’t have a year plan I may not know this!
How do you plan out your year for success? I would love to hear about it!
I'm working on a project like this for my music room. So glad to have read your ideas!!
Awesome!! It doesn't take long once you start. Good luck!