I have used various online and paper teacher planners over the years; some of them have been really useful and I've used them continuously for a few years. However I'm sure like many of you, I like to change things up every now and again, and recently after seeing someone using a spreadsheet for their day planner I thought I'd turn to my trusty Numbers. I love Numbers as an infinite whiteboard, collaborative planning tool, and recently even a vision board for my renovations. I love that I can add images, photos, videos, links and text with such ease, but because I had previously used a third party teacher planner app, I'd never thought of for daily lesson planning.
Enter inspiration... I started to think about how I like to see my whole unit of work at a glance; get an overview of my scope and sequence, and realised that instead of multiple files with matrixes for each topic and each year group, plus additional apps for marks, seating plans and daily planning, Number could do all of this in one.
I currently teach four different courses across years 10, 11 and 12 so keeping track of everything can be difficult at times. I like to see that I'm organised. I used to love my paper teacher planner; I'd write all through it and then stuff it full of every piece of paper that came my way 😀 but I didn't like the bulk and storage of it. I have since used a great teacher planner app, but I have to go in and out of lots of pages to switch classes, and it's difficult to see everything at a glance.
I have not set up my timetable, daily lesson planner (with links), unit scope and sequences, seating plans, and markbook all in one file.
I love that I can link directly to the lesson material, either online or in my files for easy access when I need it. I also love that I can record evidence of learning within the file; take photos of learning, upload scans, keep marks recorded. Most importantly I love that I can plan out my units in the matrix on the year specific tab (I create my matrix table fortnightly as I teach 7 or 8 lessons a fortnight per course and this allows me to see those two weeks at a glance), and I then simply copy and paste the individual lesson into the timetable planner tab. I can make changes and adjustments as I go, but also easily work from this as a basis for the following year.
July 17, 2023
So impressive Erin! What a great organizer! I’ve also used Numbers as a white board but now I’m going to get organized with it! Thanks for the share.
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