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5 Lesson Planners You May Want to Try
posted by: Melissa | July 27, 2017, 07:27 PM   

Every year when I was teaching, I’d walk in the first day, go to my mail box and there my school-issued lesson planner would be waiting for me. I was never happy with it. The boxes were small and cramped and the pages never seemed to be set up in the exact way that I’d prefer, and so for years, I’d write my lessons out twice: once in my real planner and then once in the school-issued planner. At times, I’d just print out my computer created lessons and tape them in.


My experiences are not unique. Teaching is a career made up of individuals, and everyone approaches lesson planning slightly differently. When I first started teaching, I thought I had to use the school planner and that there really wasn’t an alternative out there that would suit my style. Fortunately, this is not the case. There are many different styles and kinds of planners, and below we list five that you may be interested in:


  1. Erin Condren’s Planner: If you do a google search online for lesson planning books, this one will come up again and again. It has all the features of a typical planner, plus several additional sections and pages that are aimed at increasing teacher productivity, a folder for storage, and organizational stickers. Not only that, but it’s made with high-quality materials and teachers can customize the planner’s cover to match their personality.
  2. Planbook: Planbook is the solution for teachers who want an online solution. Their comprehensive online planbook supports a variety of scheduling that can be easily adjusted. They’ve also made it easy to write lessons by including the standards in the software, featuring a customizable lesson template, and allowing attachments. The software can be used by individuals or whole schools.
  3. PlanbookEdu: PlanbookEdu is another online lesson planning software. Like planbook, it allows you to easily connect to your state standards, keep lessons from year to year, easily share lessons, and works with a variety of smartphones. It also boasts a clean design and focuses on making planning simple to use. The main difference comes in the price. Unlike Planbook, PlanbookEdu has some free features, however to get access to the features you’re most likely to want to use, it costs nearly twice what Planbook does. In the end, the difference between the two comes down to which features are most important to you.
  4. The Reflective Teacher Planner: Unlike other teacher planners, this planner features setting goals and tracking progress. Along with the typical planning pages, and pages for tracking schedules, communications, and the like, there are goal setting pages for each month, quarter, and year. There are also reflection pages for each month and quarter, and a ‘brain dump’ page that gives teachers a place to brainstorm what to do next time. The planner is available on Teachers Pay Teachers as a download that is intended to be printed out and put in a binder.
  5. Tracee Orman’s Teacher Binder: This is another Teachers Pay Teachers find, which is designed for teachers to print out and place in a binder. However, this particular planner is designed for the unique needs of secondary teachers. Because it comes as a download, its lesson planning page template is customizable, and it offers plenty of options for tracking attendance, assignments, parent communication, seating charts and more!

What lesson planner do you use?

Share below!


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