how do you organise your lesson plans/ diary/ meeting notes etc

[life1000]

so far had a combination of paper diary/ A4 lesson plans and phone diary. now thinking of buying A5 organiser so that I can have diary sheets/ lesson plan sheets etc everything in ONE folder. Also thinking of buying Ipad... withh this work? how do you organise your paperwork etc?

[Philoslothy]

I use idoceo on my iPad, everything is on there and it syncs with my outlook diary.

[LoopyDoopyDoo]

I don't write lesson plans but I have a teacher planner, write what lessons I have in it and note what I plan to do, but use it more to write what I actually did. I use google calendar as a diary - school stuff on one and a shared one with DH for family stuff, then a school wide one too.

[petalpower]

I have an ordinary A5 diary that does school and home, then a big A4 teacher planner where I note an overview of what I'm doing and any notes from lessons, then an A4 folder with clear pockets - I have one pocket for each day plus extras for IEP's meeting notes etc (and all those random bits of paper).

[fourcorneredcircle]

Another vote for idoceo here :)

[colander]

I have a spreadsheet with outlines of each lesson along with lists of possible activities and homework. All broken down by year group and topic. I then use an A4 teacher planner to work out the teaching order (e.g so I would write "lesson 2 on DNA topic for year 12" on Monday period 1 and so on). It has taken a long time to set up, but the effort has been worth it. I have also cross referenced exam questions for gcse and a level.

I am quite geeky :-)

[life1000]

I relly like the idea of cross referencing to the SOW. so colander your a4 planner is a paper planner and excel outline - print out?

[Philoslothy]

I have all my schemes of work saved into my iPad.

I can them copy and paste each lesson into the planner section of idoceo and edit it as needed. much quicker that way .

[colander]

Yes - I print out a copy each year and then annotate with extra notes. For example things that worked well with a particular class, or new resources. Or sometimes just "need to improve this lesson"! So the reference from the printed spreadsheet is what gets written on my planner

[life1000]

so in the planner I wr ould put see lesson 2 SOW Autumn etc...? then add differentiation by pen or do you also put differentiation into SOW?

[colander]

The printed sow has all the refs to differentiation etc. so I might write "enzymes lesson 1" in my planner, and then on the printed sow that I have done will be things like - enzymes lesson 1 - need to print this activity, enzyme dominoes in the filing cabinet, this exam question works well for lower ability groups, use this power point, two different plenaries depending on ability of group, print this homework. I have also highlighted the practicals I need to book in advance.

I find it useful as with A level teaching we alternate the topics so I only teach a topic every two years. I then keep the printed copy up to date by transferring any written notes across at the end of the year. Great thing about secondary teaching - I teach a lot of year 11 and year 13 so the last half term is freed up for stuff like that :-)

[life1000]

I really like the idea...the planning was probably huge to set up this system. so which.headings do you have in your excel? lesson contect, differentiation, resources?

[colander]

I actually didn't spend ages planning it. It was more a solution to a situation where I had l loads of lesson power points and saved resources but no overall picture. I was finding that I was opening the next lesson PowerPoint and reading "carry out the practical to extract DNA" and then thinking - oops I didn't book that practical!
I just have lesson number, lesson details (which is where I put the outline of the lesson and any differentiation but mostly I have differentiation already on the PowerPoint e.g. A set of core questions and then a set of challenge questions) then a heading of resources needed and finally a homework column.
Lots of schools have set sow - we do have them but I have a different teaching style to some of my colleagues! I am in the private sector so the teaching doesn't have to be ofsted-driven, and therefore I just developed my own sow as I didn't want to use the existing one - which is only a brief outline anyway. Hth

[Hobnobissupersweet]

A third vote for idoceo, with lesson plans, sow all on drop box, then notes made in idoceo. Also quite like the teacher planner app, but we have only recently got that.

[Philoslothy]

Is that a separate teacher planner app or idiceo?

[Hobnobissupersweet]

a separate teacher planner ap, whole school decision relatively recently

[Philoslothy]

Why a separate one , just out of interest? We use idoceo, but is this better?

[Hobnobissupersweet]

um not really sure, think we are about to find out more. I think (bear in mind it is well past wine o clock) that teacher planner has a high degree of talking to student planner so easier to set homework etc?
it has all the options of idoceo eg random student assignment, notes on lessons etc

[fourcorneredcircle]

hobnob do report back when you can... I love a new ap...