30 Days.

Hey there everyone! Life has been so crazy lately. It has been absolutely amazing, but crazy! I'm now fully moved into my new apartment and just got back from an unforgettable vacation to the Seattle area in Washington. I even finally got to try kayaking! I love getting to have new experiences and getting to cross things off of my bucket list.

Ok so I haven't just been having fun this summer, I've also been busy getting ready for the upcoming school year. It's crazy that school starts in exactly one month! I'm absolutely in love with my new Erin Condren Lesson Plan Book! This is one of best investments I've made so far. I mean besides being practical, it's adorable too!

It has been so useful as I have been finishing up my year plan. Year plans are so important but I was so nervous to create mine. I just had no idea where to start. I finally figured it out, but I think it would have gone smoother if someone had taken me through the steps first. I created this post to help new teachers like myself create their first year plans. So what is a year plan? A year plan is a long-range plan of everything you're going to teach during the school year. They are important because they help to keep us on track throughout the year. It may sound like an overwhelming task, but I've broken it down into three easy steps.

Step One: The first step is to look at the standards for your district/school. For most of you that will be the Common Core. However I teach at a private school and as a result we have are own set of standards. As you look at the standards, highlight the standards that must be developing or mastered at your grade level. This will make it easier as you're deciding which lessons you would like to use from your text books. As an example, here is a page of my math standards.

Step Two: The next step is to go through your text books and see which lessons match up with the standards. For example once I was done highlighting my math standards, I went through each chapter of our math textbook and wrote down which standards each chapter covers. As you can see below, some chapters cover more standards than others. This will also help you determine how much time you need to spend on each chapter.

Step Three: For step three, you will need to have a year-long calendar. I used the one in my Erin Condren lesson planner and it worked great. Now that you've figured out what standards each chapter covers, you will need to decide when you'll teach each chapter so that you can for sure cover all the chapters that you need to. Below you'll see my completed year-long plan to give you a visual.

Phew! It feels so good to finally have my year-long plan done. Now it'll just be so much easier to create my daily lesson plans. I hope this was helpful for everyone! I hope everyone's having a fantastic summer! :)