Teacher Binder & A Freebie!

In the past I've used the teacher planner books that we get from Friesen's. They do a pretty good job and they contain everything that I need, day plan space, grades, calendar etc. My main problem with them is that they don't look very nice, and they aren't customized to our schedule. As a high school we are on an 4x80 min block, 2 day rotation schedule. The teacher planner has space for 8 classes. As a result it has too many classes and not enough space for each. In addition they aren't very nice looking, and I like things to look appealing if I'm using them everyday.

So before the end of the school year I decided that I was going to change things up for the fall. I purchased myself a nice green Martha Stewart binder from staples and I've decided I'm going to use that instead. My next challenge was to find a printable lesson planner template that would fit my needs. Now you may have noticed that there are lots of these types of things for junior high/elementary school teachers, but not so much for high school teachers. Needless to say I couldn't find something I was happy with so I decided to make my own. This offered me the opportunity to fully customize a template for my own needs and make it look nice at the same time. So I grabbed some free graphics from Vector Jungle and set to work in Corel Draw. I'm absolutely thrilled with the result. 

In addition for space to write the lesson for each day (I keep more detailed plans than this, but my lesson planner is more of a quick what's happening/to do list for each day). I also left myself some space for listing Handouts/Resources I need to have ready, giving this a dedicated space means its easy to locate. The class name section is probably a bit bigger than it needs to be, but I can also use it to write notes for assemblies and reminders of that sort. Finally, I included a small space for lesson reflections since I want to be more active in writing stuff down this year. I figure if it's right in front of me I'm more likely to include a reflection. 

With that I thought I would make the lesson planner available for you to download if you'd like to use it. I'm going to be creating a grade book template and probably some others in the very near future and I will likely make those available as well. Keep in mind this is only for personal use, and please let me know what you think! Once I have my entire binder put together I'll share some photos and info on that.

I may create some templates with different graphics in the future. In the meantime here's the link for the lesson plan template, Enjoy!