For those of you that Teach, you may have seen the Spring 2013 Organiser pages I created with the help of Ray ready for you to print and use. Well I have now completed the Summer set of pages, with 2 sets available due to Counties having differencies in their summer term dates.

I have based the main option on Essex (because I live there), but the Elsewhere option covers an earlier Easter along with an earlier term end. I also know some schools don’t finish until the end of the week (26th July) so I have added some extra pages to cover those dates seperately. It seems that most Counties have the same dates for summer half term so it just depends when your school term begins and ends, download the PDF by clicking on the set you would like below:

Essex: Easter runs from 29th March until 12th April, half term is 27th-31st May and term ends on 23rd July 2013.

Elsewhere: Easter runs from 25th March until 5th April, half term is 27th-31st May and term ends on 12th July 2013.

22nd-26th July: Monday 22nd – Sunday 28th July 2013 (extra weeks planning pages and the weekend pages).

Please check the term dates you need and the actual pages BEFORE printing them so you make sure you have what you need If you need some blank planning pages they are also available on the Files page so you can print them and fill in the dates yourself. There will be the regular month pages if you just want the week on 2 pages Enhanced Time Management pages. I need to add the rest of the summer pages for these but April’s set is already online, May – August will be put up as well shortly.

As ever, please feel free to leave a comment below to let me know how you are getting on with them. I would also like to add to the page selection available next academic year so if there is something you would like me to create then let me know!

Files are available here

Views: 554

posted by SazD
Filed under: custom inserts, Filofax, Teaching

Tonight I have been laying awake in bed worrying. I have not done this for quite a while thankfully, and yet tonight I find myself treading an all too familiar path of worry about things I have little control over. I cannot even begin to explain why I am filled with all these thoughts and fears but they are there and as long as I am being kept busy they hibernate fairly well.

They have reared their ugly, nagging head this time because I quit my long term supply position that I got back in January. My last couple of posts, prior to a large silence, have been about the job so if you haven’t read them they will hopefully illustrate some of the everyday craziness that went hand in hand with the role. I don’t like giving up and will struggle on far beyond most other people before finally self combusting. But on this occasion I felt I was making myself ill because I was, on some occasions over the past few weeks, scared to be in my own classroom. Not because I couldn’t do my job but because I spent more time on “crowd control” duty, pacifying students rather than actually being able to get on with the actual teaching. Yes in a mainstream setting, occasionally you find a class or year group that also warrant the “crowd control” job title rather than teacher title but this school is anything but mainstream and you actually get the students that have been turned away from many other schools, with a variety of reading ages and a complete mix of levels in the main core subjects. They are far from the easiest class and unless you have taught such a mix of students with the backgrounds these students have then you probably can’t quite even imagine – I certainly learnt a lot about these students this term.

I feel like I have let myself down along with the students that were actually trying to get their work done by leaving, especially as it was not because of all of “my” students I finally bit the bullet, it was partly due to constant disruption from other students and members of staff which impacted quite substantially on my students and my lessons. I was aiming to get my class using the computers and have spent a considerable amount of time not only planning and devising the scheme of work to sort them out learning not only what they needed for the exam but what they needed for life generally, but I have also spent a lot of time fixing the computers in my room, leaving detailed notes for the technicians to fix the bits I can’t fix when new parts were needed after they were trashed or smashed yet again. It has all just led to me feeling frazzled and disillusioned, my resilience faded away a few weeks ago and since then it has been a constant trial to even just get through the day. Last Thursday I finally lost the will to carry on and before break time, 10.45 am, I was well and truly broken. The students had been “better” than the previous day according to other staff later that day but by break time I had already been snapped at 4 or 5 times by a member of staff and that continued during the rest of the day. I wouldn’t have minded nearly so much if this had actually been an appropriately placed telling off but it was not, it took place in front of students and was all because of people being in a bad mood, not for actual things that I had done/not done or things that were my fault!

Anyhow, all that aside, I am still trying to convince myself I have done the right thing.

I have had what can only be described as nightmares since last Thursday, apart from Saturday night because I was so tired when I got in from baby sitting my cousins son I just slept.

I have continued to look for jobs all the while I have been on this supply job, there has been the usual quiet time at the start of the year but I have been applying for what I can and have now started to see an influx of opportunities as we near the Easter cut off point for leaving at the end of the school year. So, over the next few weeks I will be applying for the jobs I find and selling myself in the hope that I can get back in to a regular, non supply, teaching job in a mainstream school. I still want to teach IT but I now have more of a specific open minded approach to what I want to do and what/where I don’t want to be. I want to be at a school where I can have my Filofax open on the desk at the front of the room, with all my lesson plans and class details in, without worrying that it will be defaced, thrown against the wall on the other side of the classroom or stolen. I’m sure that is not too much to ask? I know I sound a little fragile and jaded at the minute, but I will shake the last bits of my nightmare and spend some time in a regular classroom this side of the Easter holidays, then over the Easter holidays I can gather my resources and get back to it after the 2 weeks holiday better than ever.
I need to learn from this term and move my development forward from the experiences I have had rather than looking back and turning into a wibbly jelly every time I think about it. One example of the good things to have come out of this term is that one of my students taught me how to do sudoku – I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a genius at it but I did manage to complete the “easy” one in the Metro last week, on my own, so that is a good accomplishment (that I did thank the student for last Thursday).

Over the next week I am going to prepare the Summer Term Teachers Organiser pages and will upload them to the files page when I have done them so others can do the preparation work for the summer term over the Easter holidays as much as possible. I am going to make sure that I have a really positive remainder of the spring term (yes the last 4 days of it!!!) and a damn good summer term as well! If anyone tries to tell me different or tries to deny me of this I will be putting my foot down…

It’s funny how writing this sort of stuff down is so cathartic, really does help to get it off your chest I guess. Over the holidays I also need to write a couple of letters, I have not written to my pen pals this year and I am pretty sure they must thing I’m a bit mean and useless! So I am really sorry if I should have written to you and haven’t yet, I am on the case and will be sending out a whole bunch of letters ASAP, must equally remember to purchase a book of stamps as well…

S x

Views: 223

posted by SazD
Filed under: computers, Filofax, Teaching

The email I had been waiting for finally arrived Thursday, it was confirming that I would be teaching at the school I talked about in my last post.

This is quite a big event for me as I have quite a lot of responsibility combined with some challenging students. Not only do I have to get them through a Functional Skills in ICT qualification, but also their English, Maths and Science qualifications plus any additional awards such as ASDAN Bronze Award or their Food Hygiene certificate.
I have to work alongside their current teacher planning wise for the next week or so to get up to speed on what they have been doing, what they are entered for and work out how to incorporate their ICT (which they have not yet started) into their curriculum appropriately.

I do of course have TA’s (Teaching Assistant’s) and an HLTA (Higher Level TA) in my class to work with as well, which also need to be planned for as they are permanent fixtures so to speak! This will undoubtably help but I will need to make sure they know the plans and can do the ICT tasks as well.

I need to ensure that my lessons are made up of small chunks of work that combine to make a 45 minute lesson and that it is obvious what each part of the work is for so the students realise they are doing each bit of work for a reason rather than just because they need to be kept busy while they are there (which seems to be the thinking of a few of the students from what I saw and heard while I was there at the start of term).

Because if the nature of the school environment, I cannot take my usual Teaching kit into lessons, so I have created a new setup for my Filofax so I can note down after each school day any issues, plans or ideas for future lessons and have basic notes to guide my planning and preparation for the entire week. We have a daily debrief after the students have gone home which is really helpful, I will add notes from this to my new pages as well.

I did try to use my Teacher’s Organiser pages initially; I did not have them with me during class but I used them at the end of the day to work out the plan for the next day, except this wasn’t very useful during the day. So, after I found out I was returning definitely I started to think about how I would need to set up my Filofax to accommodate a bit of planning and also any appointments or notes. I was also missing being able to see my week in front of me, sure I have my lovely month on two pages from Lime Tree but I seem to have gotten used to the Enhanced Time Management week to view pages I got from Philofaxy. I was just going to print out my customised Enhanced Time Management week on two pages but I then had a better idea!

These are what I ended up creating:

I printed them out on my lilac A5 paper as I found the yellow a little too see through and bright (I did find it better after I had used them a while) but when I made my pages last May/June I had made them on lilac paper, if I hadn’t printed the month to view on the light blue paper I would have printed the weekly ones on it but both on light blue paper makes it harder to see where the months are so I continued with lilac and printed the rest of January, all of February and all of March on to the lilac pages, punched them and put them in my A5 zipped Holborn. I will see how I get on with them both design and paper wise then over Easter I can make any changes as necessary to either the design or paper before I print out the pages for the summer term.

Hopefully these pages will help me plan out my work in a coherent manner and support the last few months for the year 11′s so they can at least come out with some qualifications.

Sunday will be spent putting together a resource to get them started on their ICT first thing Monday in order to give me time to review the notes and files the other Teacher has left in the office for me. I think the subject I am most concerned about is English as Maths and Science are fairly easy and logical for me, English however is going to be harder mainly because of the large variation in reading age within the group.

I am aiming to post at least weekly about the challenges I am facing and what has been achieved so far – this will depend on how busy/mad it gets but it will also be a good source of reflection for me and will help with my future development plans.

S

Views: 660

posted by SazD
Filed under: A5, custom inserts, Filofax, Holborn, IT, Philofaxy, Teaching

This week has been a rollercoaster of events and emotions. The week started with a trip to Ilford to meet with yet another Teaching Agency followed by a similar trip to Brentwood straight after to meet with one there. I arrived in Brentwood with 2 hours to spare so I walked to Sainsbury’s with the aim of getting some food. Before I had even set foot inside the store I had a phone call from the guy I met with in Ilford, how did I fancy 4 days’ work this week starting tomorrow? The job sounded good, it was not too far away and he offered me good pay. I accepted the job and called one of my ex colleagues who was going to need to do my reference as quickly as possible so everything could be finalised before 5pm.

I had no idea what I would be teaching but I was looking forward to it.

I arrived at the school before I was due to arrive and went in to find the Deputy Head. She was happy to see me and showed me the room I would be teaching in. The room was nice and big but was quite dull, smelt of paint and had 4 computers just sitting on the side all unplugged. I was then handed the largest bunch of keys ever and was told to make sure the doors were locked at all times.

I was introduced to more staff as they arrived, mostly TA’s (Teaching Assistants) or HLTA’s (Higher Level Teaching Assistants). There was a SENCo and several other support staff. There was one other Teacher, he was teaching the year 10’s and I was teaching the year 11’s.

The way I plan my lessons and what I take into a classroom had to be completely different from what I have become accustomed to. Anything could end up as ammunition; this meant I was definitely not going to put my Holborn Filofax in jeopardy when even a whiteboard marker will be damaged and used recklessly. This week I therefore used my Holborn to write in my first day’s lessons at the end of the day so I knew what we’d done and then made some notes for the next day on their pages. Usually I would have my lesson plans open on the desk in front of me but this week I just had to get all the resources out and lay them out before the students arrived, at least if they threw the resources around they could just be reprinted.

Rather than having a selection of ICT lessons across the day to plan, all at different levels, I had to plan a variety of different subjects at different levels that would keep the attention of the least enthusiastic student. After all, I was Lead Teacher for the entire week.

Not once in the entire 4 days did I have to raise my voice. I know there are a lot of people who would not want to work with this sort of student and a lot that would make them worse. I realise now this is why I was praised so much during the week and I need to seriously look at more positives about how I work than things which are in many ways still haunting me from negative people I have worked with in the past. I also want to develop my curriculum knowledge in other subjects so that I can support and guide my students better. Rome wasn’t built in a day and these students didn’t arrive in this position over night, they have 5 months roughly until they leave school and either get a job or go to college. I hope in those 5 months they can achieve the things they need in order to turn things around for themselves. In the same 5 months I am setting myself the goal of achieving the things I need to in order to go in the direction I want to in my career and also life. Smart goals reached by celebrating every small achievement along the way.

Views: 456

posted by SazD
Filed under: Filofax, Holborn, IT, Teaching

Following on from the previous post, I have now added to the Files page the first quarter of 2013′s week on 2 pages Enhanced Time Management pages in month sets. This is to allow for Teachers with holidays that don’t fit with the Essex UK School term dates to print off the relevant pages to use with the Teachers Organiser, or if you aren’t a Teacher but still like the look of my pages then you can also download and print them!

There are also now some blank Teacher Planner pages that I have added as well. You can print these off as you need to and fill in the dates yourself.

Views: 1104

posted by SazD
Filed under: Uncategorized

Happy New Year! As it is the start of a brand new year I have made a set of Teacher’s Organiser pages for the Spring Term 2013 available for you to download and print. These are the newly updated pages and are put together so that all you need to do is download and print them on which ever paper you choose and you are ready to go. The pages are PDF’d to A4 so you can happily print them straight to A4 paper, booklet print them, or even print them directly to A5 pages if you wish. All the margins are set up so you can print them on both sides of the paper either by getting the printer to do it for you or if you need to manually do it.

The set is for the Spring Term 2013 only – the file would be even larger if I had included the rest of the school year! They are also based on the Essex UK 2012/2013 school calendar so those of you in other places will need to check when you have your half term and Easter holidays. If you need slightly different holiday dates for Spring Term 2013 (January-April) please leave me a comment and I will see what I can do, further files will be added to the Files page (see the new menu item at the top of this page) as and when they are produced.

The Teacher’s Organiser pages look like this:

Cover & 1st page of the January calendar – month on 2 pages.

2nd part of the calendar & 1st week of week on 2 pages.

2nd page of the week on 2 pages followed by the planner pages.

2nd page of the planner page & Tuesday’s planner page.

2nd part of Friday’s page & the weekend pages.

2nd page of the weekend & the following Monday’s planner page.

I have not made an editable version available because I used several different Word and Excel files then PDF’d them and combined the PDF’s to make this one giant PDF. That is another reason why I have made it for the Spring Term and not both Spring and Summer Terms! The Summer Term file will follow soon.

They have Enhanced Time Management Week on 2 pages for any non teaching weeks and my Teacher’s Planner pages for the teaching weeks with the weekend pages (also in Enhanced Time Management view) at the end of each teaching week. Where the teaching week doesn’t end on a Friday at Easter I have included a full week on 2 pages Enhanced Time Management view for the whole week as well, you can use the pages as you need. All the original pages that I used and tweaked to my own style are available from the Philofaxy website and were created by Steve and Ray. Ray also helped me with my Teacher’s Planner pages, particularly the mail merge code! The Philofaxt community is an amazing source of help and inspiration so if you have not checked it out already do it now!

They are available in the Files menu above but I have also linked them to this post here: PDF

Views: 1859

posted by SazD
Filed under: A5, custom inserts, Filofax, Teaching

A few people have been talking about page a day pages suitable for journalling, I made myself some based on the ones Steve and Ray have on Philofaxy.

In addition to the ones mentioned below, I have just made a printable PDF of A4 page a day lined journal pages, all you need to do is print them. You can booklet print them to A4 paper so each page is only A5 or you can print directly to A5 paper if you want to.

The file for that is this one: Merged Journal PDF Pages 1st Nov 2012 – 12th Jan 2014

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There are 3 variations of the basic page – one with times, one with just lines and one with boxes at the bottom for checking off if you have taken your vitamins/glasses of water/exercised etc. obviously these can be customised for your own needs.

They have the page size set to A5 but you can easily change this and stretch the table to fill an A4 page, just make sure you keep it on one page!

I have also included the Excel file which I originally got from Philofaxy but have edited as I made sure the dates in it covered from now until January 2014, you can extend or reduce this as required by removing entire lines or highlighting an entire row and using the square blob in bottom right corner of the cells you have selected – just make sure you allow for the days up to the 31st of every month!

Day per page with times

Day per page boxes

Day per page full lines

Day per page Excel file

Views: 991

posted by SazD
Filed under: A5, custom inserts, Filofax, Philofaxy

Here is the video I uploaded to YouTube about my A5 Zipped Holborn. How I use it to stay organised, without having planner fail like a lot of other people unfortunately seem to be having lately.

No Planner Fail Here Video

Views: 225

posted by SazD
Filed under: Uncategorized

As you may have seen from my last post, I designed a layout that I wanted my Teachers Planner to look like. I have now made the files and with the help of Ray over at  My Life All In One Place, they have now been merged and the dates added.

The pages consist of a day on two pages, with the 5 lesson planner on the left and notes/tasks for the day on the right, a two page spread for each weekday (so Monday to Friday):

A weekday page layout – one day across two pages

Followed by the weekend on two pages – the left page for appointments and the right page for tasks/notes:

A weekend page layout – two days across two pages

I have already merged a copy that can easily just be printed out, either on to A4 or A5 paper depending on your choice, if you need to change the lesson times then you can go right ahead and change them to suit your school/needs. I am going to do a version that has a line to write in your own times but will add that later as I need to go and edit the files but I can’t do that today.

So in case anyone wanted to test them out next week onwards I have merged a complete set that covers Monday 15th October until Sunday 23rd December 2012, it currently has the half term week as a regular school week as the holidays change across the UK depending on the area so I have left it as it is currently but I plan to use the Enhanced Time Management week on two pages for my holiday pages so you could print out those for yourself if you wished as well – or you may like to turn the day pages into one big box for the week and have each day on 2 pages, which ever suits your needs. I may also include my customised version with the Enhanced Time Management pages for half terms on here once I have also had a play and created them for myself.

You may notice that the font is different in the two Word documents, this is because I prefer the Comic Sans font as being Dyslexic it is clearer for me to read but others may prefer a different font – you can change it as you need yourself! I may also change my font colour to blue before I print mine as well as I much prefer it not being black. I will also print it straight to coloured A5 paper double-sided using my awesome printer! But you could easily booklet print it then chop it in half if you wish/need to print it to A4.

Have a look and let me know what you think, for those of you with less or more lessons a day, you should be able to easily change the left hand page to suit your day as it is only the top rows of each page that have mail merge data on them. Just be careful where your page ends and check you haven’t gone onto a new page by pressing the Enter/Return button on the keyboard as I ran into several problems with carriage returns/page breaks when I merged the original files. It would be good to know what others think of the pages.

My thanks again to Ray for helping me with this little project!

The files:

For the pre-merged and ready to print Word document: Pre-Merged

For the source files you need the Word document AND the Excel document:

Word Doc       Excel Doc

If you want to change the dates, say for January 2013 onwards then you will need to go into the Excel file. If you change the top date then using the handle at the bottom right corner of the cell (the mouse turns to a smaller black plus symbol instead of the large white plus symbol when you hover over it) click on the black square under the mouse icon and drag your mouse (still holding the mouse button down) down the page until you have changed all the dates to the ones you want. If there are any dates remaining that you don’t need (there maybe as January to July terms are usually shorter) then just delete the entire rows they are on. If you want more dates than I have already put in the spreadsheet, you may also need to use this method to pull down the rest of the other columns as you will need them all for the merge to work properly.

Any issues/feedback please get in contact! 

S 

Views: 1908

posted by SazD
Filed under: A5, custom inserts, Filofax, Teaching, Uncategorized

Last night inspiration struck just as I climbed into bed and I just had to get it drawn out on paper while I had the excitement flying around my head – I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep until I did anyway!

So after about an hour or so of drawing in my square grid notebook (that is actually a bit smaller than A5 which will mean there is definitely enough room for the Filofax holes and also possibly a bit more space to put the entire layout) this is what I had drawn out:

There will most like be some sort of tweaking that will need to be done when I create the pages in Word but also after they have been used for a few weeks I imagine. But for now they are a start on suitable pages for me while teaching.

I got inspiration for them to look like this after using Steve and Ray’s Enhanced Time Management Week on 2 pages for the last few weeks. The boxes on the left page were roughly what you get in one of the teachers planners I have already used but felt there was never quite what I wanted available. I had been using (somewhat successfully) a customised day to a page layout last term but it was never the “finished” layout of my dreams as far as planning lessons was concerned.

I can therefore combine these pages and if I want weekend pages of the day to a page variety after the week of these pages in my Filofax then it is very easy to sort out.

I had also thought that once I have finished with a week in my Filofax (I will keep the previous 2 weeks, the current week and 1 or maybe 2 further weeks of these day on 2 pages teacher planning pages in my Filofax but not more as that will get heavy to carry and isn’t really necessary) that I will need to put the pages into some sort of binder to keep them “stored” at present I think treasury tags and a box file might be the easiest way to store them tidily.

I would be really interested to know what any teachers reading this think of my layout ideas. Do you like it or have I completely missed something?
As I said, I haven’t yet created them in Word but when I do if anyone else would like to try them out just let me know!

Views: 2488

posted by SazD
Filed under: A5, custom inserts, Filofax, Teaching