Planbook Connect: Electronic Lesson Planning

J.R.R. Tolkien — 'It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.'

That quote should apply to cleaning my house, but I refuse! Between all the travel adventures, binge reading, HBOgo, and lake time, I have began thinking about school (I know, I know, it's only the beginning of July, I can't help it). So between FIFA soccer games, I figured I'd tell you about a wonderful tool that has helped my lesson planning immensely: Planbook Connect.

Side note: Our district bought our team and several other teachers Macbook pro airs this past school year. I'm not sure now how I ever taught without it before! It just makes everything easier and quicker, which time saving for a teacher, is a HUGE deal. I use this software with my Mac, but they do have a windows version available. 

Planbook is basically an electronic lesson plan book on crack. I just started using it in March with the free trial and finally I asked my technology director if I could try it. It's pretty pricey, but I have decided totally worth it! You can create 15 lessons for free in the trial version. Here is a screen shot of my planbook for the week of March 31-April 4.

I have organized mine very similar to my old paper lesson planbook created in excel (I stole the idea from my mentor). As you can see, I broke it into subjects which worked for me. Science/SS is a combined time and sometimes we do one or the other. Genius 1/2 Hour is a time period where some students leave for RTI and this is what we do with the kids who stay in my room. (This is a time for students to research things they want. I'm still learning more about how to implement this and do it better. It was an experiment this year and I have found wonderful websites on passion projects/genius hour that I'll post about another time. So far though, I LOVE this time and really it doesn't require planning, but more so deadlines so I may tweak this section for next year). Writer's Workshop, ELA mini lesson, and ELA small groups are all during our afternoon ELA block. We begin with writer's workshop for 45 minutes, an ELA mini lesson, then Daily 3 rounds during which I do small group guided reading instruction. I teach 2 sections of science/SS and do not teach math.

Back to Planbook---
If you notice that the right side has more information about the lesson. I have clicked on the "My Life as a Drip" Science lesson. I can add more info for me and add homework (this syncs to the online system so students can access documents/info at home as well,  but I haven't tried it with students yet). My favorite part is I can also attach all the documents associated with the lesson including teacher info and student pages (in this case, the graphic organizer) to print out for easy copies. This helps keep me sooo much more organized, no searching for online files or forgetting what website/video clip I shared with students. This software also allows you to 'bump' lesson to the next day if you didn't get to it or the whole day (great for snow days-No more erasing!!) and you can build in custom days (like our SOAR days that happens every 6th day).

Here is another view when I clicked on the lesson:

You can add this lesson to the lesson library (which allows me to reuse it next year, saving all the information) and even attach standards addressed in the lesson. As you can see, I added this to the Water cycle unit. This software allows you to print/email multiple reports, one of which is a unit plan that includes all the lessons you have added. You can even print weekly/monthly plans if needed for administrators. Here are some examples of the week above.

Weekly Report (notice you can print or email a PDF file)

Unit Report (notice you can customize how much information you want to include depending on your intended recipient)

You can also print a report by standard, but I haven't entered all my standards or connected them to each lesson in the app yet. Oh, I forgot, they also have an iPad app that will do all this as well! 

There are numerous other options with this software that I can't wait to explore more! I have began planning for next year and this has made it so much easier! We are working on if my team and I can share lesson plan books since we plan everything together. It also has the option to sync with your iCal which will be helpful with our shared common assessment calendar. Using the online system at http://www.planbookconnect.com, you can view your plans from anywhere (even if you leave your computer at school). 

I hope this makes your life easier too! Please let me know if you have used something similar, know any other features, or need help! Happy summer planning! 

Summer Projects: Start a blog!

St Augustine — 'The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.'

Traveling is the best part about summer vacation! Adventures this summer include: 

*Playa Del Carmen, Mexico (Girl's Trip)

*San Antonio, TX (Family Trip---aka I drove 13+ hours in a car with my 3 nieces/nephew under 10 years old, basically as exciting as it sounds)

*Cayman Islands (Vacation)

*New York City, New York (my sister recently moved here, but it worked out timing wise because I was selected to attend the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy that my friends at Space Camp told me about. If you haven't  heard of it check it out---I'll let you know all the fabulous things we do there.)

*San Diego, CA (for COMIC CON!! I'm so beyond excited that we actually got tickets, even if it's only for Wednesday and Sunday #nerdfest). 

Point of this is during all my travels, I always learn things to take back to my classroom to share with students and I need somewhere to store all my thoughts/ideas. And I decided hey it's summer and why not start this blog thing I've been considering for a while? Plus, I need somewhere to link my tweets to (I can't get anything done in 144 characters) and then maybe I can pin my own ideas to share with fellow teachers.

First thing you need to know if you are going to read my blog is that my brain works faster than my fingers and mouth, so I try my best to not make typos and proofread, but as I would tell my students: It's informal writing! :) 

Also, as my teammates would say about me, I don't mean to interrupt, I just randomly remember things and get really excited (hints why I like to use a bunch of parenthetic notations). My brain just jumps all over the place sometimes!  

Speaking of my team, here is a fabulous picture of us at School Day at the K. They are amazing and any other synonym you could use to describe them. We work wonderfully together and I am so beyond blessed to work with people who have amazing ideas, are willing to try new ideas, and care so deeply for the lives of students (not to mention are fellow book nerds). I'm beyond sad that we are going to 4 sections next year and Danielle is moving to 4th grade. She's my other newbie that stays till way too late at night working on stuff and is the most down to earth person ever. I'm hoping it won't last long and she'll be teaching with us again!