There has been much debate recently on the use of the teacher planner on Twitter and on Teacher Talk Radio (you can listen here, I have yet to do so at the time of writing!) I have tried so many different options over the years but I think I have finally settled on a simple system that allows my planner to work best for me, and not the other way around!
Disclaimer – planners are personal things. There is no best way, just your way!
I’ve seen some incredible looking planners from teachers, such as those provided by the Teacher Planner Company. I’ve also seen some really effective use of Planboard for those who like a bit of tech in their lives. For me, I need a system that saves me as much time as possible, and is paper based so that I can “see” my week to view without the need to log on to my computer. Here I will share my process with the hope that it will help somebody somewhere to streamline their own. I will also link my excel file for those who wish to adapt it.
Setting up my planner.
In my school we run a two week timetable. Since the first year of my career I have used an excel spreadsheet to produce a printout of my timetable for my lab so I use this template, drop the colours, and scale up to fit on A3.
So this is essentially a page of my planner, week to view. I do a version for week A and week B, then ask our wonderful reprographics guy to print enough back to back, for 1 full term. The beauty of doing this is that the class codes and my PPA / leadership time is already written in so I don’t need to spend hours doing that! Also, I allocate a time each week for planning. The only “admin” I need to do is to add in the date for each week at the top.
Filling out my planner – my second brain!
I have played around with fully electronic versions of planners and, for me, having a paper version is so much better. It allows me to make edits on the go and, as I have already mentioned, I am not bound to any one network or device. Being a science teacher, it is important that some planning is done at least 1 week in advance so that practical requests can be submitted and processed. (We do this via Lablogger, I have written about this in the past albeit it is now a bit of a dated post – feel free to check it out here.) Here is a breakdown of what I do each week, and why I do it:
1 – Class codes included on original printout. This is a huge time saver – this year I am going to add the number of pupils in brackets to make it easier for me to figure out my printing requests quickly!
2 – I write in a lesson title or code (we have lessons and resources planned centrally as a department), any printing I need is written in and highlighted in green. Once the week is completed I can then send 1 big email to our reprographics guy with my request for the week. Simples.
3 – Homework that is due is written in and highlighted in yellow. I used to be terrible for setting and forgetting! This really helps me to set up strong homework routines with my classes.
4 – Practical orders written in and highlighted in blue. We have centrally planned practicals called “GSMs”. You can read more about these here. When I have completed my weekly plan, I upload what I need to Lablogger, this normally takes 10-15 minutes.
5 – I tend to use some of my non-teaching time to deal with my to-do lists. I find physically writing these out and crossing them off to both help with my productivity and sense of achievement!
6 – Space for after school classes, meetings and interventions with pupils.
7 – Notes for whole school events such as trips, vaccinations.
8 – In the run up to exams I tend to meet with pupils 1-2-1 or in small groups during non-teaching time. The purple on the image shows these meetings! (Blanked out names of course!)
9 – Lesson count down! I find it very useful to keep track of how many lessons I have before the next assessment. I normally do this in the 3-4 weeks leading up to internal assessment points or external exams for Y11 and 13.
Closing thoughts.
It doesn’t look pretty and I cannot save it to the cloud BUT it works for me. Each to their own on this one folks! My best advice is to try different approaches and then settle on what works best for you. If it makes you happy, saves you time, gives you an opportunity to practice mindfulness, and/or helps you organise a high mental load, then it is worth doing.
As always, I can be found over on twitter if you wish to chat more @djgteaching.
Thanks for stopping by!
DJG Teaching 