I’m finally trying out Planbook for my lesson planning

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Late last week (Thursday night?), I began experimenting with Planbook, the online lesson planning program. I had heard about it from a teacher-friend of mine who is in her second year of teaching. Obviously, all these new apps for teachers don’t always get discovered by veteran teachers who are just slogging it out in the classroom day in and day out.

Anyway, about a year ago, I remember looking at Andrea’s lesson plans. I remember thinking how nice it was that her plans were available online at any time. In addition, she could access them at home on her personal laptop, on her phone using the Planbook app. She could also maintain these plans year after year and easily access them.

I am using the program’s 30-day free trial right now. The full version apparently costs $15 per year. I’m guessing I’ll be contacted to upgrade in about a month.

My current system is very “old school.” I write my daily plans out on sheets of paper in a three-ring binder. You can see an old binder from 2014 in this photo. When I fill up the binder, I put a little label on the spine of the binder and then store it either on the table behind my desk or in my closet.  When I need to find out what I did in my sixth-grade classes last year when we were starting to learn how to write five-paragraph essays, for example, I have to find the binder and then dig through the daily sheets, assuming I know approximately what time of the year to look for.

It’s time-consuming. My notes are there, but sometimes during the quick rush of the day, I might have scribbled an abbreviated note that made sense at the time, but definitely doesn’t now.

I also use a spiral datebook planner in tandem with the daily sheets in the binder. The planner helps me plan for long periods of time and inform how I plan when I fill out the daily sheets. Using these both works… kinda. It seems like my system could be so much more streamlined.

At least it’s better than it used to be. During my first few years of teaching, I filled up a binder each quarter. Then for a couple of years, I only filled up two binders… one binder for each semester. Finally, over the past two years, I’ve been able to fit the entire year into one binder.

Regardless, it just isn’t efficient.

So, last Thursday, I decided to finally give Planbook a try. I had contemplated using it several times but didn’t take the plunge until Thursday, the second day of school. I was filling out my daily sheets, thinking to myself This needs to change, and then I just googled Planbook and dug in.

It wasn’t hard to figure out Planbook. I would call it intuitive, even. There are various “levels” of planning you can do. I chose the middle level of complexity, but so far have filled out the template in a minimal way. There are spaces to add standards for each lesson, for example, and I can go in and do that later, but for now, just knowing I have a neatly typed template for my day-to-day planning is great. I’ll print my plans out for now so I can read them on paper throughout the day. I really don’t like doing everything on a screen. The best part of this switch is knowing that these plans will be easily accessible in the future.

That’s really all I know about Planbook at the moment. I know very little about what more is available if I were to purchase the $15 upgraded version. It’s also worth noting that the program isn’t just for teachers to use. There are ways for students to access the program, as well as administrators. As I continue to use it and explore its features, I’ll let you know what I learn. And if I decide to ditch it all together for some unforeseen reason, I’ll let you know that, too!

Thanks for reading! Do you use Planbook? Got any advice or ideas to share? Feel free to leave a comment about your experience.