Throwback Thrusday: Year-Long Planning Goes Digital

I am linking up for the first time with Angela at The Teacher's Desk 6 for her Throwback Thursday Party and Kristen at Teaching Trio for their Technology Thursday Party.

Now I haven't been doing this blogging thing for long, but here is a post from earlier this month that didn't see the traffic I had hoped (mostly because I am still learning).

Teachers are starting to get into the mode of planning and preparing, so this seems like a great read with a Freebie at the end.



So here is my Throwback Technology Thursday:

Year-Long Planning

There never seems to be enough time during the school year to accomplish everything that I want to accomplish.  For years I would simply cram at the end of the year.  However, teaching AP Psychology has cured me of that because I have to finish every unit before the AP Psychology exam in May.  I knew I had to devise a way to plan everything out to give each unit quality time.

The nice thing about teaching AP classes is that the College Board gives you the percentage of each topic that is on the test.  I used this to my advantage and divided my total instructional days up based upon the percentage of the AP Psychology exam that is each topic.

For example the College Board says 8-10% of the test is Research Methods. I took my instructional days (165) x .10 = 16 days.  I then counted out 16 days to the test for Research Methods.

The first time I did this I simply wrote the test days in my lesson plan book.  However, the need to see the whole year at once eventually overtook me, and I created the following spreadsheet.  This one is for Honor English 11.  I marked the vacation days with v, so I wouldn't accidentally plan on those day.

Year-Long Plan for Honors English 11

A close-up view of my Honors English 11 Planner

Stephanie Richardson at Eat.Write.Teach suggested that you limit units to 2 to 4 weeks, which I did for all my English classes.  For AP Psychology I simply used the percentages as outline above.

This year-long plan has helped me to stay on track, so I can accomplish all the major units that I want to over the course of the year.