1. Pick a system, and stick to it!
Our teacher planners are a great way to get organised. Their customisable format allows you to tailor your professional holy book to your own mind, encapsulating not only the register, but custom pages to remind you of school policy, deadlines, and plan one to one time with each student all on a single page.
BESPOKE TEACHER PLANNERS
Teacher planners designed to help with productivity, organisation and wellbeing for your team
2. Make a backup.
Anything from taking photos of important pages to scanning the entire lesson calendar – making a backup can turn a potential disaster into an inconvenience. But – try not to lose your planner, as you might not be able to live it down in the staff room!
3. Know your Red Letter Days.
When is sports day? When does half term start? When do I need to schedule parents’ evening? When is the deadline for consent forms for the trip to that pretty place? Our personalised A4 teacher planner can make sure that these days are all in the calendar before you’ve even opened it.
4. Collate and organise your resources.
The amount of time spent at a photocopier is probably about 3 or so years (utter and total guess there) for each teacher over their career. Hopefully, you’ve got a lesson plan in place – but make sure to collate all of your teaching materials in one secure place (ideally at the school) for easy access at any time.
5. Have instant help sheets for school policies.
Particularly disciplinary ones, they’d fit nicely in one of the built-in cover folders featured in our 6-period teacher planner and our 9-period teacher planner!
6. What’s the transport like in your area?
Bus routes? Maybe the nearest tube stops? Note them down in your custom teacher planner and also look up the routes and/or lines that your students use on twitter and follow those accounts for information regarding updates and delays. Don’t know which routes your students take? An excellent idea to introduce them to something called a survey!
7. Teaching to a strict curriculum? Co-ordinate with colleagues.
If each teacher is singing from the same educational hymn sheet – then we can add this to point 4 of the list. If you’re teaching the same lessons, with the same resources, but at different times, you can share resources, cut down the paper and copy costs (and not trees!) – and improve efficiency if done right. You could also use a custom page in a teacher planner to book timeslots for access to the materials.
8. Prepare a plan for students who fall behind.
Most issues stem ultimately from a lack of planning. In our previous blog post we talked about how to help students who’ve become disorganised. Create a workflow, perhaps in association with your colleagues and Head of Year representatives to get them back on track.
9. Textbooks updated? Donate the old ones.
Publishers have a tremendous advantage that lies hand in hand with human progress. Teaching methods, scientific knowledge, historical findings – you get the idea. When the new ones come, donate the others to a local library and make sure you tell your students where to find them. Remember, order in matter, order in mind!
10. What are your goals for the year – including staying organised?
Finally, one of the best things for all teachers to put on the front page (or behind the cover!) of their planner is a set of goals for the academic year. Professional and personal! Anything from getting fit, to volunteering next summer, to making sure your class gets at least a B average! But we know you’re more ambitious than that!
Penstripe creates some of the best teacher planners in the UK, and many of our clients think that our products constitute the best teacher planner 2024 and beyond! New for 2024/25 Teacher Planners is a 5-period diary. We’ve reacted to our customer’s change in requirement to produce this new product that now complements the traditional 6 and 9-period dairies.
You can learn more about our products easily, just contact Us
Olaf Surtees has been with Penstripe for ten years; what he doesn’t know about teacher planners, student planners, and lesson planners isn’t worth knowing! He’s in charge of creating our blog content, helping teachers and administrators with helpful hints and tips, as well as our socials — see the links below to find out more.
