A question that comes up regularly during the summer holidays is, 'Is it worth getting a teacher planner?'
Yes it most definitely is!
This week I'm sharing with you all my 'go-to' teacher planner, and while I shop around before purchasing, I always find myself going back to the same brand - The Positive Teacher Company! It is a fabulous all-rounder that does everything I need it to do to get me through the busy school year.
Before you read on, this blog post is not an advertisement and is not sponsored by or endorsed by the brand - it is my own review and all opinions are my own.
The Positive Teacher Company: Teacher Planner - The Outside
First of all, I know we should never judge a book by its cover, but one of my favourite things about TPTC's planners is the beautiful cover designs. This year, I loved the planner-by-planner design reveal and there are so many beautiful designs to choose from. My heart was set on this year's Lily design from the moment I saw it! And this year, I treated myself to some planner stickers to match:
I haven't used my stickers yet, so I'm keeping them stored in the handy wallet inside the front page. This little feature is great for storing small notebooks, documents and prints needed for the day. The cover is also very sturdy. I'd love to be able to say that my previous planners have all been treated with the greatest care, but sadly that wouldn't be entirely true; during the national lockdown, like many others I had to move around the school building to multiple classrooms so my planner spent a lot of time going in and out of my over-filled bag. Even so, my previous planner lived through this to tell the tale, and as you can see in the image below, the cover still looks pretty good:
As you can see, there are a few very light marks and dents, the corners have become bent and the ring binding at the top and bottom has bent inward slightly, but it still looks beautiful and has done amazingly well! This was last year's planner, and TPTC have listened to their teacher customers when designing the planner for the current academic year.
The 2021-2022 planner now comes with corner protectors as part of the design, so no more bendy corners! What's more, the ring binder is a lot thicker and sturdier so is less likely to bend inward over time.
The Positive Teacher Company: Teacher Planner - The Inside
I could spend hours writing about every single page found inside this planner as it has so many uses, but instead I'm going to share my ten favourite features that I feel take it to the next level and why it is my planner of choice. For confidentiality reasons, I can't share images of my completed planner, but feel free to contact me if you have any questions about how I use it!
1) Weekly Wellbeing Review
This featured in last year's planner too, and I think after the 18 months we have just had, lots of us have realised just how important things like this really are.
I simply used red, amber and green highlighters and coloured how I felt after each day. Although this seems simple, it actually opened my eyes to things regarding my mental health that I hadn't noticed before, like why I was struggling to relax at the weekend, why Mondays were so tiresome, and general patterns that kept occurring.
I've said this before, but teaching can be quite lonely, particularly when it comes to wellbeing. Use this wellbeing tracker to identify those points where you may need support, regardless of whether this is to do with teaching, mental health, or both.
2) Action Lists
Deadlines - the dreaded word that floods our precious PPA time! While I do like writing a good to-do list, I find myself tackling the smaller, easier and less important jobs first just so that I feel like I'm not adding to the list faster than I'm crossing things off! I love how this page gives me the chance to categorise my tasks by importance and urgency. I can then be a little wiser with my PPA time, and rather than tackle the first easy task that appears, I have a very clear visual reminder of the urgent and important job that needs to be done. There obviously is still some willpower involved in choosing that high priority list, but when I used this in my last planner, I found that I spent less time avoiding these tasks and I rarely left the more urgent tasks till the eleventh hour.
3) Group Focus and Intervention Organisers
I found these pages particularly useful last year. They're concrete enough so I can specify what the group is for, my targets and achievements, as well as monitoring, but adaptable enough for the pages to be used with a wide range of groups and purposes. For me, these included 6 phonics groupings, Speak Out Challenge students, various after school revision classes and inference catch-up groups. I was able to use the double-page scaffold to outline my plans, identify staffing and student groupings, set targets and monitor these. For larger groups and for very long term planning, the assessment record pages may be more suitable, but I found that these pupil focus pages were great for my smaller intervention groups as the scaffold means I have to be concise and there isn't too much unnecessary pen-pushing.
4) Termly Overviews
Every school has their own format when it comes to schemes of learning and lesson planning. These are often very long and detailed, but TPTC's planner has pages dedicated to inputting your termly overview in a much more condensed way. While I still regularly accessed my school's SOLs, I used my planner pages so that I could judge where I am at a glance. The 'Long Term Overview' page gives you the opportunity to organise your year, and has multiple rows, making it accessible for teachers of all key stages and subjects. For example, primary teachers can input all their different subjects, while secondary teachers can instead write down all of their classes. You can also use the space to mindmap teaching ideas and begin to think about the resources, books, support etc that you might need.
Each individual half-term also has its own dedicated double-page calendar so you can identify what is being studied, when and by who. Now, this is where I wish I had invested in some washi tape! I've never used it before, but I've seen my colleagues divide up their half-term calendars using tape and as well as looking fabulous, they also were able to create sections for different groups, such as one off classes, assessments and deadlines. Washi tape is definitely on my next shopping list for stationery! Don't try to cram too much into this section - you can save all of that for the weekly planning pages (next up!).
I also love that these termly plans also include a timetable and seating plan page, for each half-term. The staff at TPTC clearly know that in the classroom, things change all the time! Last year, I had an early timetable change, as well as multiple changes during the lockdown. Having a fresh timetable and organiser for each term meant that my planner never got messy despite having multiple changes. The seating plan pages are helpful, but as I taught 7 classes last year, 1 seating plan per term wasn't enough. However, my room layouts never changed so I just used all the seating plan pages across the whole year and this worked for me.
5) Weekly Planner
The weekly plan pages are my favourite part of this planner! Like the intervention scaffolds, the grids included leave lots of room movement. The weekly plans cover the whole year, and are empty enough so you can input what teaching periods/times you have down the side. Again, this is another instance where washi tape will come in handy. If I include tutor periods and CPD, I will need two more rows. But these boxes won't need a lot of space, so a bit of washi tape to divide the first and final rows would be perfect for this. I also will be purchasing a page marker. It's not something I had thought about previously, but I never realised before just how much time I spent finding the right page every time I reopened my planner! A page marker simply clips onto the ring binding and pokes nicely out the top of the planner so you can find your page without rifling through and creasing the pages.
I divide mine up based on what I am doing in each hour. I write the name of my class, the learning objective, and the resources needed. If the resources are printed, I simple highlight it, so if it's not printed I will be able to know this at a glance. Something I learned during my NQT year was to always dictate what I will do in my PPA time rather than simply write 'PPA' in the box. This made it permanent and generally meant that I made the most of these hours. And please don't ever write 'free'! Because of this, I was able to have a pretty good work-life balance.
I also learned when using these weekly plans to invest in an erasable pen! I always tell my students that it doesn't matter if they make errors, and that crossing things out shows they're reflecting and learning - but I can't follow my own advice when it comes to my planner! I forward plan quite far, so this inevitably means that I often have to edit my weekly plans depending on progress, interrupted days or assessment changes. As well as wanting my planner to look lovely, I also hated the fact that the amount of changes sometimes confused me as there were lots of crossings out in various boxes. So, I bought a set of erasable pens (you can see my pen of choice in some of the pictures) and I can say that it was an absolute game changer!
6) Meetings and Briefings
These pages mean no more carrying extra notebooks to meetings and briefings! Now don't get me wrong, I am all for notebooks and having a 'necessary' abundance of these, but carrying a multitude of items to meeting rooms is definitely something I'd rather not do. The briefing pages are super handy as they are small, clear and there are lots of them available in the planner. I also know exactly where to look if I need to go back to a briefing, rather than rifle through various notebooks.
The meeting proforma is great too. Like the briefing notes, there are lots of these available in the planner, and they're easy to come back to thanks to the page dividers. The 'Actions' section is fab too as it encourages you to identify any steps or tasks needed moving forward, and you can revisit these at a glance rather than reread all of your notes to find any action points. I've found that for short meetings, I occasionally used the briefing notes sections as I wouldn't need a whole page for the meeting, and this worked well for me.
7) Assessment Record
The assessment record sheets provided in the planner are close contenders when it comes to my favourite part of the planner. These pages are found at the back of the planner, and there are plenty included so you're very unlikely to run out, whether you're teaching primary and have multiple subjects, or secondary and have multiple classes. Most schools have their own method of data collection and tracking, typically electronically, but I find the paper tracking easy to access and let's me organise the data how I need it to be organised.
I write the students' names in the first column, and the second column (and third if necessary) is used for any SEND or additional needs codes. After this, I write the date of the assessment and the assessment objective in the top row of the next available column and simply write their mark in the students' box. What I love about this though is that you can include any form of number or code for their result, whether it be a mark, grade, progress signifier or stage of learning.
I also RAG my data, so I can open my assessment record and gain a fast visual snapshot of the progress of a class as a whole, track the progress of specific students, and notice any patterns in achievement such as over time or within specific assessment objectives. To do this, I simply colour in each square with a highlighter based on how I feel they are progressing towards their target, completely subjectively.
8) Habit Tracking
Now this is a new feature and I'm not 100% sure how to use it yet, but I am going to be writing down my most common classroom habits in the top row, and using the remaining columns to track the habit over a period of time. I'm going to trial it first with my go-to RAGging method, and if that doesn't work then I'll use the good old fashioned tick or cross!
Although I haven't used this yet, I truly believe that self-reflection is one of the most important parts of teaching. It can be hard to identify personal habits, and even harder to ask someone else to point them out. It's important to take that few moments of time at the end of the week to self-reflect and celebrate yourself, as well as reflect on an area for development. Your identified habit doesn't need to be a negative one! Actually, wouldn't it be great to pick something that is positive, that you want to become habitual in your classroom? In my training year, I worked hard to develop my use of descriptive praise, and this is now a habit. A habit tracker like this one would have been such a useful tool in supporting me with this.
9) Calendar Functions
Many teachers won't use planners as in some cases planners aren't so good at the diary side of life organisation. A feature of TPTC's planner is that it includes diary functions too, meaning you won't need to purchase both.
The planner comes with standard diary features, such as personal information pages, spaces to note down useful websites, blogs and social media pages, daily overview pages and so on. It also includes a month per double page calendar with space to note down important information and 'to-dos', an appointment page, and an academic year overview with space to write down important dates.
I also love the front page of the calendar section! It's positive and encourages you to identify and remind yourself of your goals, strengths and achievements.
10) Inspiration
Finally, I can't go without mentioning how the planner lives up to the brand name. Throughout the planner are reminders of how amazing you are, the difference you are making in the world, and reminders of the importance of self-care. I love my job, but it can be lonely, stressful and exhausting. When you use this planner and you see the note of encouragement or the prompt to take some time to rest, listen to it!
At every page divider you will find a well placed piece of honesty, inspiration or motivation. These are wonderful to come across when flicking through your planner at the end of a long day or the start of a lesson. The weekly plan pages also have a different statement every week, making the positivity and honestly tricky to avoid :)
The planner has lots of other useful features that will support you throughout the academic year, so while my blog post isn't full comprehensive, I'm hoping this rundown of my top ten TPTC teacher planner features will show you why I love it so much. It does everything I need it to do, is the perfect size and never fails to get me through my busy year. Whether you're a trainee teacher, an ECT or an experienced teacher, this would be my recommended planner!
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