Yearly planning aids?

[annabanana1992]

Several of you have mentioned that you plan for the whole year over the summer. I would like to have a weekly plan for each week next year as well. Do you use a particular form or resource? Any tips or advice would be appreciated!

 

 

Thanks!

[mcconnellboys]

I just use a plain old teacher's planner and pencil. No fancy computer programs for me. I do tend to type in my science and history/lit/reading plans now, but other than that I'm pretty low tech.

 

I just go through my texts and decide how I'll divide them up into manageable daily bits, then write in each day's work in my planner until I've gotten all my subjects covered. I'm doing logic stage now, so am adding in more writing, tests, etc. I plug those in where they need to go.

 

So, for instance, Wednesday of week 10, my son has

 

a continuation of lesson 9 work for Bible, which he's working on all week;

 

Singapore textbook pgs 65-66 and workbook exercise 26; Key to Geometry pages 5-6;

 

Spelling Workout page 43;

 

Outlining workbook page 41;

 

Handwriting, Getty-Dubay page 40;

 

Writing Strands 3, lesson 9 continuation;

 

Abeka grammar test number 3 and oral language lesson drill for that day;

 

we'll be reading Fafnir, by Bernard Evslin, for lit;

 

he'll be working on Tree in the Trail for geography (I haven't gotten it scheduled out yet);

 

he'll be doing exam 2 in Latin that day; he'll do page 33 in his Greek decoder book;

 

he'll be reading Odin's Family: Myths of the Vikings, Neil Philip;

 

and we'll be continuing with our history study of Vikings for the week, with readings I have detailed on my history reading list for the year.

 

I just work this out one subject at a time until I've got them all done for the year.

[Ria]

I started by using a spiral notebook, and then transcribed into my Elan planners. Here's the link; I used the top one, the S08 full-page. They are only $3.50 each so I always gave one to each child.

 

http://www.elanpublish.com/k12-undated-student-planners.cfm

 

Ria

[momee]

Can I jump in, what if you get off track on say, math??? How do you go about adjusting the schedule? Or is that what Saturdays are for ;)

 

I'm just back from the store with two different type teacher planners and am trying to figure all this out. I was just going to do TOG stuff and take the LA and math as it came.:bigear:

[mcconnellboys]

I look over my texts carefully and try to really make sure that I'm breaking down the work into easily manageable chunks for the short course time periods that I use (generally 30 minutes for math at this age). Because I build in plenty of buffer time in this way, we generally have tons of extra time for just reading. Or, if we sleep in a day, have a sick day, have a field trip or class out of the house, then we generally still have time to get our work done for the day. Or we'll have time to get it done in the next day or two afterward.

 

I don't think I've ever had a course of study that we've gotten way behind in and been unable to complete. That might be a different matter if we'd ever had any sort of major family emergency, but we've been blessed, I guess. If I had to reconfigure a course of study after laying it out due to such circumstances, or because the child just needed to work way slower than what I'd allowed for, I'd just redo it. That's why I do my planner in pencil - so it can be changed if necessary.

 

My younger son has not ever had to carry over and do homework at night or on weekends thus far, so I'm hopeful that he'll continue to stay on course as he gets older. Now, my older son tended to daydream if I didn't stay on top of him, and particularly as he moved into adolescence he did sometimes have to roll over work into "homework" after regular school hours.

 

I think checking in with them regularly and answering questions, going over things with them, etc. helps to keep them on track and moving forward. If I left my son to his own devices and didn't check in with him throughout the day, then I think that I would come back next day or later and find that he didn't complete all his work - which would throw us off track.

 

I'm sure that doing the next thing may work out beautifully for many people. I don't always do textbook work in the order in which it's placed in the book, however. Where I skip around in a text, I can see myself very easily losing whole tracts of text and not completing those, LOL. We are so very busy during the school year and I have so much stuff on my mind on any given day that I just don't trust myself to stay on track if I don't write stuff down.

 

For instance, I do the little Oral Language Lessons review work with my son daily. It's part of Abeka's programming. I didn't happen to jot it down as part of my planner notes this school year. I've found that it's been forgotten about half a dozen times this school year and I've had to backtrack to catch up with it. It's a tiny book and it just gets buried in my stacks and if I don't see it, and it's not written down, I can easily neglect to do it.

 

With many subjects now, I also write in when I want to do quizzes, tests, worksheets that go along with the readings, etc. If I didn't have all that ready to go and written down, I would never manage to get even half of it done. So I guess, for me, writing things down means we move through more material, more quickly each day, and end up getting more accomplished for the year.

[Sunshyne]

I think donnayoung.org has some great planners, too.

 

I've been giving this some thought since I always plan a week at a time on Sunday evening. I think I may sit down and plan a year at a time, just to have the big picture, and then break it into weekly chunks.

 

I think it'll give me some starting/stopping moments just to say, "Wow, we did it," before moving on to the next thing.

[ClassicMom]

I'll second Donnayoung.org

 

I also like Tanglewood's corebook for the younger set.

 

While I do use a computer program for my high-school students to log their grades and hours, I still give them pages from Donna Young to keep track of their work and hours and then I log it into the software.

I know that I can use the program to make lesson plans and such, but it is too much work to do that when they just need to do the next thing.

 

NARS also has a really nice highschool record book that keeps track of lessons and hours as well. I was thinking of getting this one for this year.

[MamaT]

I make weekly planners in Word, and student planners broken down by days of the week in Excel. The weekly planner just shows when things get done each day, when things are due, etc. The student planners I pencil in daily assignments. I do all this over the summer. Whatever is not completed is done over the weekend. My kids are pretty good about getting things completed, and only my high-schooler has had to do any work over the weekend.

[katilac]

Can I jump in, what if you get off track on say, math??? How do you go about adjusting the schedule? Or is that what Saturdays are for ;)

 

I'm just back from the store with two different type teacher planners and am trying to figure all this out. I was just going to do TOG stuff and take the LA and math as it came.:bigear:

 

I always have several 'catch-up' weeks planned throughout the year. One right before the holiday rush, one in the spring, and one at the end of the year. If you are all caught up, that time can be used for projects, extra field trips, etc.

[nutmeg]

Can I jump in, what if you get off track on say, math??? How do you go about adjusting the schedule? Or is that what Saturdays are for ;)

 

I am just ramping up to this level of planning, but this is how I see it: If I make a year plan, it is a plan on how I want to cover the text and add supplemental materials. In other words, what to do for each lesson, but not when to do the lesson.

 

For math, this is pretty simple. I typed up a list of lessons, inserted the tests, added some check-off boxes and hit print. Spelling / Vocab / Logic / maybe others are simply "do the next thing" and would not need a big plan.

 

For history, I might develop a list such as Day 1) Read text and discuss, Day 2) Read text and discuss, Day 3) Finish text section, do outline for essay, Day 4) edit essay, watch DVD, etc.

 

With these type of lists in my teacher's notebook, planning for the next week becomes a snap. If we have a co-op day or outing next week, I just plan on doing the next four things on each list. And I have these lists to help me see at a glance how we are progressing through the year.

[Cottage Mom]

Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education is helpful for planning a whole year. You don't have to use CM ideas for it to be useful.

 

I agree with others Donna Young's website has a lot of great forms for planning. Tanglewoods corebook is a nice planner. In the front is has a section for planning your year. If you have more than one student you can print their pages out on different colored paper.

 

After I get things planned I transfer it into this planner, I have one for each kid. The planners from Donna Young and Tanglewood are a lot more flexible for making adjustments throughout the year.

 

Has anyone ever designed a planner just for the WTM? Could you imagine three different planners/lesson books, one for grammar, logic and rhetoric stages.

 

Monti

[SLH in ND]

Whatever is not completed is done over the weekend. My kids are pretty good about getting things completed, and only my high-schooler has had to do any work over the weekend.

 

 

I hope you don't mind, but I have to show your post to my girls, who think I'm so terrible for having them do school work on the weekends if they don't finish up during the week! They are positive that no other Mom would make their kids do that. LOL

 

Sheri :)

Mom to 3 super daughters and wife, of 15 years (TODAY) to the greatest hubby in the world!

[MommyInTraining]

I started by using a spiral notebook, and then transcribed into my Elan planners. Here's the link; I used the top one, the S08 full-page. They are only $3.50 each so I always gave one to each child.

 

http://www.elanpublish.com/k12-undated-student-planners.cfm

 

Ria

 

 

Ria,

 

I see that this one says it is for middle school. Would you still use it for elementary or is there a different one you would recommend for elementary?

 

Thanks!