Five Ways Schools are Adapting Student Planners for a Post-Corona Classroom

Time will tell on how much the current enforced school closures influences the 20/21 academic year.  For now, we can only hope things will be back to normality by then.  We’re currently working with several our customers to adapt their student planners to make them broadly work for all eventualities come September.  I thought it would be interesting to share some of these ideas here to see if they get you thinking.  If you’d like to discuss any of these ideas, or one you may have had yourself, then please call 0113 2310995.  Our office staff are all on-hand, working from home, to help with any enquiries

• Termly planners.  Why not split your student planner in three, and have one for each of the Autumn, Spring and Summer terms?  It’s an idea several schools are looking at to ensure they can support their students flexibly for the next academic year.  We can work with you to generate the dates and content and can even look to warehouse the later term planners to keep your offices clutter free.
• Undated diaries.  Another way to create a planner to work for all eventualities is to remove all dates from the diary.  We have diary templates ready to roll that will provide schools with the ultimate flexibility in creating a school year that works for them.  For now, it might be difficult to commit to a plan for September but with an undated diary you can feel a little safer in the knowledge you’ve got student planners ready to support teaching in September.
• Focusing on PHSE.  With these unprecedented times we’re seeing a greater focus on providing students with information so they can manage and monitor their own mental and physical wellbeing.  We’re seeing student planners starting to embrace these subjects by including sections of content (including our pre-written 16 pages of Student Wellbeing content) to support students.  We’ve even seen a couple of examples recently where the entire ‘traditional’ planner content has been replaced with PHSE content to provide a year-round support mechanism for students and parents/carers.
• Creating a paper/digital crossover.  With a great many students now familiar with remote learning via computers we are predicting a large increase in the use of digital teaching platforms.  A great many schools who have ‘gone digital’ use our A6 Pocket Planner to provide students with somewhere to make quick notes when the use of a digital device isn’t appropriate.
• Including content around better hygiene.  It goes without saying that when we do all re-integrate into society that there will be a much greater focus on personal hygiene.  Prompts and reminders throughout a bespoke student planner about the school policy on cleanliness will help students focus their mind on what is important and hopefully keep everyone that little bit safer.

We’d love to talk to you about your student planner requirements.  Please send a quick email to info@penstripe.co.uk to get the ball rolling on a conversation.  If you’ve got any other ideas on how to adapt planners for these challenging times then we’d love to hear them.