Sharing my Long Range Plans

Confession: I've never had a long range plan. Ever. Not ever. For real.

Then one day my amazingly talented and uber generous and inspiring friend Amanda Madden from Teaching Maddeness shared hers and a light bulb went off! Here's her post on Long Range Plans. And while you're there, please read through her series on homework {AMAZING!}

I've always taught a non-traditional class (Dropout Prevention, ESOL, Specials, Gifted) and I liked the "freedom" I thought I was giving myself by not having a plan to follow. I was like a little teacher hippie skipping through the year doing whatever I felt like doing whenever I felt like it. I covered what I knew I was supposed to and I don't doubt for a second that I provided great experiences for my kids, but I was perpetually stressed about what I was doing next and trying to plan for it.

That stressful feeling became my normal. Not good. I knew I needed a change so my goal was to create at least a guideline of where to go through the year. When Amanda shared her LRP's I knew that's what I needed to do.

First, I created a template that would cover all of the main areas of my day. That took about a bazillion different tries. But this was my end result.

Then I just duplicated the pages to have enough for the year and added our school dates and days off/testing days/etc.

Then I just started plugging things in! On our team some people use the basal and some do Daily Five, that's why there's a column for both. I still have a lot of things to add, like actual writing activities, STEM projects, Tasty Tuesday Recipes, etc. but this is a really good starting point! 

When I shared this earlier on Instagram, a lot of people asked me if I could share it. I'm happy to!

Here's what I've got:

My Year at a Glance - personalized to my year, my team (with lots of holes that need to be filled) which you won't be able to change. Get that HERE.

An editable Year at a Glance - you should be able to edit the dates and content boxes. That can be found HERE.

The font I used is KG Part of Me, so you'll want to snag that at tpt HERE. 

Here's where it gets a bit more complicated. If you are a Mac user and have Pages, you can download this document which has all of my plans that you would be able to go in and edit. (I create everything in Pages) You can get that HERE, but make sure you have that font from above, or it will look like a total wonky mess.

*To get those pink titles that go sideways, I used this powerpoint file to make the titles, then cut and pasted them into the Pages document - but you will need this font in order for it to look the same.

I sure hope that makes sense. That's about as many different ways I can think to share it! I hope one of them works for you :)