Weekly Planner

So I had a question about my weekly planner. I had posted here about my long range plans that I loooove!  So here's my post on the nitty gritty weekly planner.

Last spring I rediscovered Planbook.com and fell in love. I know I use that phrase a lot but I seriously became an advocate for it at my site.  I dabbled with it for a week or two then told another teacher.  A few weeks late I told another...which lead to a whole staff email discussing all the wonderful things about it and then I presented it to our faculty meeting at the end of the year. I even subscribed for TWO years. 

Let's talk about all the reasons why I love it. That's what you really want to know, right? The specifics?

Here we go!

1. It's so customizable (spell check says that's not a word, oops).  Just in setting up the weekly format you have the options to set up daily times for each subject, color code,  and set formats for the subject plans. This was exciting for me because I don't have a set time each day for my specials. Last year I had an hour break on Monday at 1:15, 30 min on Tues/Thurs at 10:45 and 12:15, then an hour on Fri at 12:45. So typical planners wouldn't allow for the crazy schedule I had. I LOVE that each day is customizable (see, there it is again!)

2. You can share events and plans.   I can input all the district days off and then share them with another teacher, or share a whole week's plans with another teacher..or even send them a subject unit!  YES!

3.  Bumping and extending lessons.  In the perfect world, we teach a lesson at the time it's scheduled and it's completed by the time we must move on to the next lesson. HA - I don't live in that world. There are circumstances where we have to  extend a lesson because we didnt' get it completed that day. Easy - hit the "extend" button and all lessons in that subject get bumped up one day and the current lesson is extended over the 2 days.  What about those days where something crazy happens and you didnt get to your lesson (please tell me I"m not alone on this one).  Then you hit "move" and all lessons in that subject get moved up one day, without changing pllans or other subjects. **do you hear the angels sing too??**

4. CHEAP.  Music to my ears.  It only costs $1/month for a year's subscription.  Yeah...cheap. Need I say more? Thought not.

5.  The customer support and tutorials are great!  Video tutorials for setting up your account and all the other customizable features (I'm gonna make that word a real word by the end of this post!).  Also, there is a place where you can post feedback and they actually listen. You can choose what projects you want them to work on and then they actually do it!  It is neat to see the continued improvements to the site. 

Are 5 posts enough to convince you how amazing PlanBook is? Here is one more -- with it being online, you can access it at home (think emergency sub lessons...you can save the day/week as a pdf file and email it to cooperating teacher for the substitute, not that I would ever have had a sick kid puke at 2am, nooo never :) ).

Here's a peek at my week last April.  Oh, and I didn't mention but you can link your lessons to the already provided checklist of Common Core Skills...amazing, right?!?!?  Click on the pic to take you to the google doc of the week :)

I don't have many drawbacks. I actually can't think of any right now!
There is a free month (or 2) trial you can do too if you want to check it out, which I highly suggest!!