I must not be efficient with my time.
I am not a teacher who gets their lesson plans done by Thursday for the upcoming week. Too much other stuff comes up! I have a 40 minute free period each day. So in theory, that is my time to plan a subject for the next week. But that time seems to get eaten up with:
*answering emails
*using the bathroom!
*running to the office (on the opposite side of a decent-sized campus)
*making copies
*correcting and entering grades
*prepping for the next class
*updating my classroom website
*writing my newsletter
and after school it's the same thing.
So my lesson plans have to wait. By the time I get home at 5:30, cook/clean up dinner, do family stuff, and then sit down to do some work, I am wiped out! I can hardly form a cohesive thought. So here I am, writing lesson plans on Sunday afternoon once again. Along with planning meals for the week and shopping for those meals. Sunday becomes a day that I dread instead of a day relaxing, enjoying my family, and finding some peaceful time to rejuvenate.
Life is SO BUSY!!!! I think it's time to move off to a remote island with some of those people on HGTV who are buying houses after selling all they own. Sigh. Maybe someday.
So here is what I'm excited about. Planbook.com. My new school requires that teachers use it. It's a web-based lesson planner. They use it so that the Principal has easy access to all the teacher's lesson plans. At least that's one reason. I'm sure it's not the only one.
When I first started using it, I was writing my lesson plans on excel, after a never-ending search for an organized and efficient way to write thorough lesson plans. So I kept doing that, because I was getting used to it. I could still use Planbook, I would just attach the spreadsheet to my lesson plan template. But as I was working on my plans yesterday, I thought to myself, "When I use excel, I have to re-create the labels at the top of the spreadsheet for each week. This is not efficient, either. I'm getting sick of having to do this." Then I remembered the fabulous first grade teacher at school on Friday asking how I liked using Planbook, and telling me how much she loved it. So I thought: I wonder if I could do this easier on the website? Sure enough!! I played around and watched a tutorial, and you can do great things here!
You can save plans from day to day and from week to week, just drag them down to the next day/week. You can set up templates to use for ease of writing, such as: objective, page, chapter, essential question, etc. You can color code your subjects. They are saved from year to year so you can re-use them with just a tweak or two! Once you set up your subjects, days off, and times, you're set for the year. So I never have to re-enter anything I don't want to re-write. I think we pay either $12 or $19 (I can't remember) per year to use it. But it's worth it! Now if I have to change schools, I can take it with me. It's still mine to use, and I don't have to worry about saving things on my portable hard drive, and I can do lesson plans wherever I am! You can also insert links and attach files, so that cute worksheet you made goes right into your plan, you just open and print it right from your planbook.
Check it out! It might save you some of your PRICELESS time. Here's the link one more time. By the way, I am not getting any type of reimbursement. This company barely knows I exist. (: And that's fine with me. (:
[Glitterfy.com - *Glitter Words*]
