Make a Digital Plan (with Planbook.com)

UPDATE: I’ve written two new posts with new time-saving tips for 2021! You can check them out below… Adding Custom Colors to Planbook.com Adding Icons to Planbook.com Adding Custom Fonts to Planbook.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hello dear friends!

I have to tell you, every time I look at my blog I get this horrible-pit-of-sadness-feeling over my lack of blogging this year. I miss it terribly. I miss YOU all even more! But you know how it goes I’m sure, more than anyone else does. New standards to implement, lesson planning around the clock, falling asleep in an armchair before 9:00 PM. I know I’m not alone in this! Anyhow…about that planning part I mentioned. One thing has made my teaching life so much easier this year: Oh, how I planbook.com! There are so many thing you can do with this site, starting with one of my favorite past-times…color-coding: (as you can see, ahem, I’ve yet to fill out my plans for next week. But I am blogging!!!)

Each class you create has an option to choose a color:

I set mine to correlate with my students’ color-coded subjects and I gray out the non-academic times like lunch and recess:

Classes can be set up to run once a week (which is ideal for our specials) or daily:

Now for the fun part (ok, the color-coding is a fun part too but THIS is my true favorite). There are drop down menus to copy and paste lesson formats! For instance, I have worked really hard this year to include an essential question in each lesson I teach. I also have all of my classes set up in a workshop format. Planbook.com makes it really easy to copy and paste this format. All you have to do is click on the little arrow on the right side of the lesson box:

Choose copy from the menu:

Then go to the next lesson and select paste to place the same formatting in this next area:

You can also select “extend” to continue a lesson into the next day:

This will make a copy of your exact plan which you can place in the next day’s box, so you can continue on! I type up all of my plans on planbook.com on my laptop and access them with the app on my iPad at school. THIS is really cool because I can view my plans without lugging my computer in my bag: It’s just perfect! I’m not blogging about this on behalf of planbook.com, just out of love of the site on my own. For $12.00 a year, it is a dream of a bargain considering how much easier it has made my planning life! I hope this was of help if you did not know about this site yet! How do you like to set up your lesson plans?