School Planner 2015-16 for home-educaters and teachers!

Its that time of year again....Ramadan has passed, E'id celebrations ended, our batteries have been recharged and now we are ready to refocus, energised for another "school" year bi'ithnillah...that's got to be a good enough reason for a new planner right! (...and if you are not a home educator but instead a teacher in a school or madrassa, then I've included a separate downloadable file with a "My School Planner" front cover just for you!)

Since I began home schooling around 4 and a half years ago, Ramadan has always fallen in the Summer and ended before the start of the academic new school year in September. So I've always just used Ramadan to mark the end and beginning of our homeschool year, and I think I always will.

With that in mind, I've prepared a new planner to help us to re-establish our home school routine after the Ramadan break inshaAllah.
Unlike previous planners, I have designed this one to be kinder on printing, so its pages are all suitable for black and white printing.....apart from the dividers which I kept to full colour! (we still need a little glamour!)

This years planner has been divided into 6 sections and includes dividers and divider tabs. It includes:

1. My Calendar:
2. My Education planner
3. My Lessons planner
4. My lessons weekly schedule
5. My weekly planner
6. My daily planner

It is completely not necessary to print out every section.... for me, I haven't printed out the daily planner, as I don't have that level of organisation to systematically plan out an individual day....daily! But I've included it in the planner because I know there are some who do!
So feel free to print only the pages or sections that will be useful to you.

 

1. My Calendar: This section includes:

•  "year at a glance" calendar 
•  monthly calendar.

"Year at a glance" - See the year ahead and mark off important dates.

I used this page to plan in our home school year - counting out 6 week blocks of "official" formal home-schooling with a weeks break inbetween.

I ended up with 6 of these home schooling blocks (a couple are 7 weeks as I jiggled the breaks to coincide with E'id ul Adha and the end of our personal academic year before next Ramadan).

 I don't know, but seeing there are only 6 blocks, it seems less daunting than a whole year, or is that just me?

 

"Month ahead" monthly page calendar.



The month by month page calendar goes from August 2015 right through to December 2016. I only printed off August to July next year as I'm using the planner only until the start of our personal new academic year. So only print off the months you need.

 

2. "My Education planner" This sections includes:

• Mission statement
• Student goal setter
• Curriculum and resource ideas
• Curriculum & resource list
• Website list
• Website password log

The planner includes a page for your Mission Statement. A place to empty out your thoughts and put down in a clear message to yourself what your schooling objectives are. Having this can help you to figure what direction you want to take your family / students in, and serve as a reminder to you when you feel burnt out!

I wrote more about Mission Statements in a past post that you may find helpful if you are not sure where to start here{What's your home-schooling mission statement?} and the follow up post which helps you to draft one out {Home School mission statement planner}

 

The Student goal planner is spread across 2 sheets. Its headers are empty to allow you to write in whatever subject or area of development you want to set goals for, and is divided into 4 sections to set an overall end of year goal, broken down into quarterly goals to help reach the end focus with your child / class bi'ithnillah.

The point to setting goals are not to set these into stone whereby it is either a must to reach them or a hindrance to not go beyond them. But rather, its to help set a clear direction of forward progression and to help direct an appropriate level of teaching / facilitating inshaAllah.

 

These goals may well change as the year goes by, your child may well far exceed these desired goals or may not reach them at all. But by having a clear idea of what you expect and hope for, it will help you to aid your child's study and personal development because you can see how you need to help and assist with a map of sorts of where you are trying to get to!

For older children, you may even like to discuss this with them and decide together what those goals may be.

 

I have 2 children Alhamdulillah, so I printed a goal setter for each child to allow me to clearly write the educational learning objectives I have for their studies as well as personal character development.

 

Curriculum and resource ideas allows you to list out any suggestions you may have for education material you may like to use before you make a final decision on something.

There are so many options out there, it can be difficult to figure out what will be best suited to your family or individual child's needs.

Sometimes being able to brain dump all the suggestions in one place can help give clarity into what is the best option because you don't have to work hard at mentally trying to remember your curriculum or material options as you choose one.

 

The curriculum and resource list allows you to write out your chosen curriculums and learning materials / books and identify what you already have and how much what you need to purchase will cost. 

 

 

Website list sheet to keep record of any beneficial websites you may use.

 

 

Website password log sheet - with multiple children using different log-in sites, this can be extremely useful to remember all the different user names and passwords!

I printed this particular sheet onto the back of the front cover, so that it will be super easy and quick for the kids to find should they need it.

 



The lesson planner section contains a 6 week lesson plan.

The 6 week lesson plan has been spread over 2 sheets and allows for up to 7 subject areas which have been left blank so you can write in exactly what you need.

For me, rather than detailed lesson planning, I intend on using this section to define particular learning objectives / outcomes in each particular subject - In a similar way to how the student goal setter works, but this will allow me to be a little more specific in what educational targets to work on over each 6 week block, and plan more accurate lessons in the weekly lesson planner found in the next section.
This will allow more flexibility for us to go off track if needed; so if a child needs a bit more time to reach a certain objective or can go ahead a little quicker, its can be easily adjusted each week.
So for me, this 6-week planner is more a learning objective guide...a loose map of our educational direction.

This section contains the weekly lesson planning sheet.
Simply print as many as you need for your planner. Because I'd set dates in the "Year at a Glance" calendar for blocks of official school time, I could work out how many of these weekly planners I'd need to print off.

As I have 2 children, I used a different colour pen for each, and a third colour for lesson's we'll work on all together inshaAllah.
Using my 6 week planner to take note of what objectives I want to meet this week, I vaguely planned out a week of lessons. I'll plan ahead this weekly lesson outline each week rather than putting together several weeks planning at a time, to allow for working in extra lessons if needed or skipping ahead faster.
For me, this planning is more about keeping focus on progress and helping to keep us moving forward rather than just haphazardly pulling out a random lesson to do on the spot each day (which for us means not a lot gets done!)
The notes section I used to list out anything that I needed to prepare or resource ready for those lessons next week bi'ithnillah, such as worksheets or materials etc.

The weekly planner section is more for personal organisation. Again like the weekly lesson planner just mentioned, print off as many of these sheets as you'll need.

This sheet contains a menu plan, a place to record your own personal goals you want to focus on this week, a must do list and goals for the kids and / or their learning.
For me, I'll utalise this sheet after first doing RPM planning (Rapid Planning Method) in a separate notebook - I'll write a post about this soon inshaAllah, but in a nutshell, RPM  is a really neat way to work out and organise what you actually need to get done in order to maximise your productivity bi'ithnillah. Once I've done that, I can see what really needs my attention and focus, and transfer that over to this page.

The final section is the Daily Planner. This is an extension to the personal weekly planner just mentioned, however it allows you to detail each day, with a time schedule where you can high-light things you need to do, a space to record your personal goal(s) to focus on, a must do today list and dinner plan!

For me, I haven't printed out this section, because I know I am not going to sit every day and plan out my to-dos. I think for me personally, the weekly guide is sufficient inshaAllah, but I've seen these daily planners all over the internet so it may benefit some who like that level of organisation.

So, that's it, there is this years new HomeSchool Planner!
To download and print, just select whether you want the homeschool planner, or school planner and click the high-lighted text below.

{My Home School Planner 2015-16}

For Home Educators

 

{My School Planner 2015-16}

For teachers

 

Suggestions for printing:

• The file has been designed to print boarderless so that the design will go right to the edge of the page without a white border around the edge! But to print it like this, you need to check the "print borderless" box in your printer settings before hitting print!
• Print only the sections or pages you need and decide how many copies of each sheet you require. - you might want to just manually go through each page and print individualy so that you can adjust your printer settings to black and white or colour as needed, and adjust the number of copies that are produced.
• To print the cover and section dividers, I'd really recommend printing onto at least a 230gsm Gloss photo paper, because it really will give a professional looking finish...and when you have cut out and attached the divider tabs it really will look awesome inshaAllah!



I'd love to hear any suggestions for next years planner inshaAllah, so please leave any ideas in the comments below!