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Teacher Planners Galore! What Do You Need to Plan Your Year?

Teacher Planner Blog Pin

What do you look for?

What do you look for when you buy a new teacher planner? Is it more important for it to be cute or functional? How often do you find yourself wishing you had made a different choice after you’ve purchased one? Do you pride yourself on making your planner look cute and put together?

I’ll admit I like a cute planner as much as the next teacher, but I cannot bring myself to spend $50 on a planner that I know wasn’t meant for me. As a secondary teacher, I don’t need a birthdays page, a class list, a daily schedule, six boxes for planning per day, or any of those other planner pages that scream, “I only have 25 kids in my class!” I need sace for two preps, six classes, and 130-180 kids. But hey, like I said, I like a cute planner too!

What’s the solution?

So what’s girl to do? I have gone the Etsy route ordering two different planners from two different sellers. I’ve gone to Mardel and chosen what I thought was the closest to what I’d need. I’ve even bought a couple of things off TPT to try and fill in the blanks on the things I was missing. The closest I ever got was an Etsy seller who customized pages for me that I then printed and bound myself. That was awesome (and it had Harry Potter characters in it!), but by the end of the third grading period, I was wishing I had something new.

I kept seeing digital planners on Etsy and TPT, but I couldn’t make them work or I felt they were too expensive. then I looked up a YouTube video on how to make your own digital planner, and I did that too. Then I realized that, as nice as digital planning is, I’m a paper and pen girl at heart. Plus, things change too much from week to week to try and keep up with those cute planner pages and stickers and calendars.

Are you feeling me?

When I was working on digital planners, I started making pages with different kids of cute artwork. Llamas, succulents, fairies, tribal animals, sea life, even donuts! I was making them for digital planners, but I realized that, if it were me, I’d want to be able to edit them for my needs and print as many as I want. And that’s when my planners were born.

Each planner includes:

  1. Reusable calendars by month
  2. Weekly planners (one on one page and one spread on two pages)
  3. A password log
  4. A birthdays log (for those elementary teachers)
  5. A to-do list
  6. A gradebook page
  7. A notes page
  8. Parent contact log
  9. Parent conference record

For some of them I even did monthly calendars with and without backgrounds and a binder cover or two. All of them are editable, so you can make them work for whatever grade level you teach.

I am super excited about my planner for next year. I usually buy mine in March and start planning the next year. I know, I’m a freak. If you’d like to check out my planners, you can find them at the following links:

Donut Planner, Succulent Planner, Tribal Animals Planner, Sea Life Planner, Llama Planner, Fairies Planner

Each planner has free updates for life, so when I get inspired to add new pages, they will be added to the bundle. I’m also including my lesson planning template in each planner bundle, but you can check it out for free right here.

If there is a certain type of page or a theme you love, comment below and I’ll add to my current listings and possibly create more!

2 thoughts on “Teacher Planners Galore! What Do You Need to Plan Your Year?”

  1. I feel the same way. Every planner I bought had something I wanted but not everything. I am now a tech coach and a lot of our teachers are using Goodnotes, Notability, etc. and of course, some still like their paper and pencil (including me sometimes!). So, I wanted to create something that you could use on the iPad with the Apple Pencil or you can print out and put in a binder. I actually had so much fun creating it and I learned a lot about how to create these types of templates. I’ve only sold a few on TPT but the teachers in my district love them and I still create new ones whenever I have a new idea!

    Laura 🙂

  2. I will have to check them out! I plan on working on my digital planners this summer. They are so fiddly! Not hard to do, but definitely time consuming. After working with both, I have to say that paper is my go-to right now. I’m sure it’ll change again in the future. 🙂

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