I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I have been working a lot this summer in order to get ready for the school year. This school year is going to be a busy one for me. I am starting my 5th year and where normally one would be less busy, I am the opposite. I am starting my masters degree and this year I am also grade level team lead. With the responsibility of being team lead, I need to be organized so I know how to answer questions any other second grade teachers may need. I am also responsible for writing the grade level lesson plans. In the past when I wrote lesson plans I always had them in word documents. Where this was nice and customizable, it wasn't very efficient for me. I would have to save each week as a different file and if I was working on a lesson at home, I would forget that I had it saved on my work computer or vice-versa. I was tired of loosing lesson plans. I have also tried the physical plan book, but I found that these were not customizable at all. I would run out of room to write certain things and when I had a reoccurring event, like lunch or specials, I would have to write it in every day. For the past 4 years, lesson planning for me was a nightmare, that was until someone at work told us about planbookedu.com
Planbookedu is on online lesson plan book.
I have been using this plan book all summer in order to get ready for the school year. I love the features that it has to offer. For only $25 a year, I think it is well worth it.
Features (Pros):
You can create multiple plan books under one account.
Standards can be entered into your plans easily.
You can bump, copy, or move lesson plans.
Easy to customize
You will never loose your plan book or have it saved on a different computer. It is online and is accessible from any computer with an internet connection.
You can also save your completed lesson plan as a PDF. That way you can either save it to your computer or even print it out.
Upload files to your plans that way you will never misplace any worksheet that goes with your lesson.
Cons:
$25 a year (or free without some of the features)
Difficult to print out easily
I have even made a video to walk through how to set up your first plan book.
I hope you found this helpful. I know that this will save me a lot of time this year and in years to come.
Now that summer is coming to an end and the school year is about to start, I figured I would gear up for the new year. I have been working on many things for my classroom this year, as well as this blog. One thing you'll notice is the new layout. I have it up and running. I also decided to make a youtube channel that matches my blog name. The YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/darlinglearners
I figured it would be easier to have all of my videos in one place instead of coming from two different channels. I still have my older videos up, but you have find them in a playlist on my new channel. Here is a new introduction since the last one that I posted was three years ago.
I have been working hard all summer. I will make posts that go into more detail sometime next week, but I just wanted to share with you a couple of videos I filmed this week. I have been going into my classroom this week and last week trying to get everything ready.
As my fourth year of teaching comes to an end, I find myself reflecting. These past four years have flown by and all of my school years are starting the blend. I guess you can say that I am now a veteran teacher about to start her fifth year. Scary!! I started this blog at the beginning of the second year and didn't use it that much to document my teaching or share new things. Towards the middle-end of this year I got reenergized to teach. I found myself making more time at home to read more about teaching and finding new ideas, thanks to pinterest and all of those amazing teacher blogs. Who knew that one website could excite me again? This summer I am going to be doing a lot of planning as well as things to make teaching fun again! Sometimes you just need a little revamp to things. Speaking of revamp, I have been working on a new layout for my blog and hopefully this summer I will have time to finish it and get it up and running. I will be around through out the summer, but towards the end of July- beginning of August, that's when I will be back. Bring on year 5!!!
After teaching for 4 years sometimes you go on auto pilot for certain lessons. Where that is nice sometimes, it's also nice when the unexpected happens. In this video I explain a happy little "unexpected".
Now could you image next year when I teach this again, it will be amazing!!! I love all the little teaching tricks I have in my bag of tricks!!
After a long while from not posting or making videos, I decided to come back. My first two years of teaching, and even before then, I found myself lost in teaching blogs and videos for hours. Teaching was my life. It was a little overwhelming once I came home everyday and just felt like my job didn't stop when I left school. It was taking over my mind and attitude, even at home. I had to make a change and that change was for the better. I found myself discovering new things and new interests. I started crafting and I even started playing the piano again. Now that I feel "reenergized" I can come back to all of those teaching blogs and videos that I used to love so much. Now I can integrate it into my more "well rounded" life of interests. Of course, there is a video for you all!!
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