My new school year starts next week, so that means it is time to put together this year’s free printable lesson plan book. In case you want to create one for yourself, I am sharing the files so you can print and customize your own lesson plan book for the 2022-2023 school year.

This free lesson plan book is designed for middle school or high school teachers who teach two or three different preps (or courses). Don’t need a lesson plan book? You could also print it and use it as a daily to-do list with sections for “Before School,” “Planning Period,” and “After School.”

I would have liked to have marked this task of creating my lesson plan book off my to-do list earlier in the summer, but I am always nervous that they are going to change up my teaching schedule without asking me.

So, I make it a point of never printing my lesson plan book until I get to look at the master teaching schedule which is usually only released a week or so before school starts.

This year, I will be teaching three periods of Pre-Calculus (including Trigonometry), two periods of Statistics, and one period of AP Calculus AB.

The AP Calculus course is a new addition for this school year. My school used to offer AP Calculus regularly, but it has not offered since the 2014-2015 school year. I’m excited to help bring it back this year.

Take A Look Inside My Lesson Plan Book

On the front of the lesson plan book, I added the school year, my name, and a list of the courses I will be teaching. In the past, I’ve added a mathematical picture to the cover, but I decided that the list of courses taught that year would be more practical going forward.

I keep my previous year’s lesson plan books in a magazine holder near my desk. I like to pull them out occasionally to see how I am doing pacing-wise compared to previous years.

The file I am sharing with you is editable, so you can customize your lesson plan book cover to include anything you want such as school name, school mascot, etc.

The first page of the lesson plan has a place to write five goals for the upcoming school year.

For my personal copy of the lesson plan book, I went ahead and marked all of the days that we will be out of school or have professional days. In retrospect, I could have probably chosen a lighter shade of gray.

The editable version shared below will not have any days pre-marked. But you are encouraged to edit the file as needed to match your school year.

I am teaching three different preps this year. Last year, I created a version of this lesson plan book that featured only two preps since I was only teaching Pre-Calculus and Statistics.

A kind blog reader (huge shout-out to Christy!) updated the dates for this two-prep version of the lesson plan book, so I have uploaded that version at the bottom of this post as well.

You will be able to use the Find and Replace Option in Microsoft Publisher to change the names of the preps to match what you are teaching this year.

Assembling the Lesson Plan Book

Once I got all the dates and class names changed in the lesson plan book file and the pages printed, it was time to break out the trusty binding machine.

I punched all of my pages first, then I added a colored binding cover to serve as the back of my lesson plan book.

Next, I added my newly printed lesson plan pages.

After adding all of the lesson plan pages to the binding machine, I finished off my project with a clear plastic cover. In the past, I have used the clear plastic cover for both the front and back of the lesson plan book.

I have to admit that the navy blue binding cover on the back makes my lesson plan book look a bit more professional.

Lesson Plan Books from Previous Years

2021-2022 Lesson Plan Book

Last weekend, I finished printing and binding my copy of my 2021-2022 edition of my free printable lesson plan book. The back-to-school season this year has been extra crazy.

That’s why it was three days into the school year before I had time to create my lesson plan book for the year. It’s also why I am so late sharing this year’s free printable lesson plan book template with you.

I designed the lesson plan book in Microsoft Publisher, printed it on regular copy paper, and bound it with a binding machine.

I also added a clear plastic cover to the front and back of the lesson plan book.

This year’s lesson plan book is essentially the same design as last year’s lesson plan book with one big exception – I’m only teaching TWO preps!!!

This is my tenth year in the classroom, and it’s my first time ever with less than three different preps. This year I am teaching four periods of pre-calculus and two periods of statistics each day.

I have pre-typed my two preps on the far left hand side of each spread of pages. In years past, I have used a purchased planner to write my lesson plans in, but I got tired of having to rewrite in the names of my preps each week.

My lesson plans aren’t anything super fancy. I write bullet points of what we covered each day in class. My principal does not require us to submit formal lesson plans, so this provides enough of a record for me to be able to look back on what we have done each day.

I also write notes to myself of extenuating circumstances that resulted in weird pacing such as fire drills, wifi outages, etc.

I tend to use my lesson plan book more as an artifact of what we have done each day in the year than as a forward planning tool. Don’t get me wrong. I am still planning ahead, but I tend to do that planning on a sheet of notebook paper, a post-it note, or on a google doc.

My lesson plan book is my actual record of what I ended up teaching every day during the school year. I like to be able to reference previous year’s lesson plans to see how many days I actually spent on a topic.

I have uploaded my editable file for this lesson plan book at the bottom of this post. If you have two preps, I recommend that you use the “Find and Replace” tool to change all of the places where it says Pre-Calculus and Statistics to match your two preps.

I have also uploaded an entirely blank version that has none of the preps filled in. This way you can print it and write in whatever you want.

Like last year, I added a 2021-2022 Goals page at the front of my lesson plan book. I’m currently 8 days into the school year, and I have yet to decide on my goals or write anything on the page. Maybe I will find time for that this week! I recently reflected on my 2020-2021 goals if you want to read about that.

If you are looking for a lesson plan book with three preps, I would recommend checking out last year’s lesson plan book and changing the dates on each page.

2020-2021 Lesson Plan Book

Today I want to share my free printable lesson plan book for math teachers. I got a ton of questions when I shared a sneak peek of my lesson plan book for this year. And I was even more shocked when several people asked if I could share the file I created.

Why was I shocked?

Confession time. I am not the greatest at lesson plans. Oh, I could crank out lesson plans when I was in college that would get me an A+ from my education professor.

He required us to write out scripts for each lesson and add a million other things. A good lesson plan was at least ten pages. The thicker the stack of pages we turned in, the better. We all know that’s not how lesson plans work in the real world.

Then, I started my first teaching job in a tiny rural town. We were told we had to turn in lesson plans, but we weren’t given a template, instructions, or expectations. I got behind one week and didn’t end up turning them in.

My principal didn’t say a word. He didn’t say anything when I didn’t turn them in the next week or the next week or the rest of the four years I worked for him. In fact, lesson plans were never really ever mentioned again.

Oh, I still technically lesson planned. I’d jot down plans on scraps of paper and never-ending to do lists. But, I didn’t have that one book or piece of software where I recorded what happened in my classroom each and every day.

So, this is why I was shocked. Nobody should be looking to me for lesson plan advice. It’s only been the past two plus years where I’ve actually kept up with a system where I make sure I write down what we do every single day for every single prep.

I’ve always thought I was alone in these struggles. I’ve tried the various online websites that promise to make lesson planning easy and painless. I always last about a week. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have to lesson plan on paper.

Before I jump into this year’s lesson plan book, let’s take a tiny peek at last year’s book.

Last year, I used a binding machine to bind the book together. It lived on my desk, and I would try to make sure and update it at the end of each day with what we completed in each class that day.

I will also write in notes of what went well, what didn’t go well, and any extenuating circumstances that caused plans to go awry that I will need to remember when I look back at my lesson plans in the future.

For example, I wrote myself a note that I was recovering from a stomach bug one Monday so I would know why I took things pretty easy that day and didn’t push my kids on to the next topic even though I probably should have.

If I haven’t taught a lesson yet, it often lives on a sticky note in my lesson plan book. I do this because I really want my lesson plan book to be a record of what went on each day in my class, not an idealistic plan of what should have went on.

We all know that those are two very different things. I guess I could write everything in pencil, but where’s the fun in that?

Last year, I used a bit of color-coding in my lesson plan book which you might have noticed. Each time I did a hands-on or interactive (possibly digital) activity, I highlighted it in yellow. This way, I could tell at a glance if I needed to up my game for the week.

Too many days in a row of just doing notes and delta math or my math lab practice resulted in a very boring looking lesson plan book and a very boring math class as well.

I used a blue highlighter to mark when we did assessments. This worked pretty well.

This year I haven’t done any color coding yet because I’m not entirely sure what I want to be tracking. I’ve had to trade in all my fun hands-on activities for digital activities. I can’t highlight digital stuff because then I would just be highlighting everything I write… I’m definitely open to suggestions if anyone has any!

The last quarter of my lesson plan book is very sad thanks to everything being disrupted by COVID. The distance learning my school implemented in the spring was very sparse, and we were not allowed to teach any new content.

Student grades were basically frozen (any new assignments could only help their grades), and as a result the number of students completing the distance learning work was quite depressing. We did department wide assignments which meant I had no lesson planning of my own to do.

My husband assured me that I would always remember why March, April, and May of 2020 were empty in my lesson plan book, but I went ahead and wrote “COVID” on the pages just be on the safe side. I am really hoping this worldwide pandemic thing is a distant memory soon.

For this year’s lesson plan book, I kept the same basic layout as last year. I did end up making a few tweaks though.

My first tweak was to give my lesson plan book a math-y cover. I also changed up the fonts/coloring a tiny bit. Century Gothic is my current fave font.

If you download my file to edit it for yourself, you’ll need to make sure you have Century Gothic and Fredoka One installed on your computer.

I had a bit of time this summer where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the layout because my three preps had turned into two. But they turned back into three preps a couple of weeks before school started, so that problem fixed itself.

Due to the fluid nature of things this year, I made a tough decision to not bind my lesson plan book with the binding machine. I loved having a book just dedicated to lesson planning that could live constantly on my desk.

This year I ended up punching the lesson plan book with my Staples Arc Punch and adding it to my disc bound planner.

I did this because I could have to quarantine at any point in this school year. If I have to quarantine, I will want/need my lesson plan book with me at home. I didn’t want to have to remember to bring it home with me every day just in case I have to unexpectedly quarantine.

I already take my disc bound planner to and from school each day, so adding it as a section in my planner means I will always have my lesson plan book with me.

I wanted to add a goal setting page for this school year. This left me with a random blank page that let me fit in a bit more beautiful math art!

I’ll share my five goals for this year in another post.

The actual lesson plan pages look very much the same as last year with only one slight difference.

We are having students work from home on their chromebooks on each Monday (except the first monday of each semester) for the entire school year. We’re referring to these as “Distance Learning Drill Days.”

We’re face-to-face with the majority of our population (some students have opted for a fully virtual schedule), so this allows us to eliminate one day of exposure each week. It also allows us to practice learning virtually in case we have to pivot to fully virtual instruction at any time.

If you look at the photo above, you’ll notice that Monday’s boxes are shaded in gray. I did this to signify that students are working from home so I didn’t have to write a note about that on every single week.

And, of course, I had to end with a bit more pretty math. If you’re looking for awesome math clipart, I highly recommend checking out ClipArt ETC. It is an AMAZING resource!

I ended up adding a printout of our bell schedule to my lesson plan book as well. It has already proved very useful when I had to unexpectedly work from home last week for a few days.

To get a better idea of how I use my lesson plan book, here’s a picture I snapped earlier this week. The lessons I have already taught were written in pen. The upcoming lessons are tentatively planned with post-it notes.

I added a giant paper clip so I could rapidly turn to the current week of lesson plans. This has proven very useful since I can’t leave the book open to my lesson plans all the time since I still need to reference other things like my calendar.

A side effect of needing to do all our assignments digitally this year is that I’m really struggling with keeping track of what I have and haven’t graded.

In the past, most of my grading was motivated by the trays of papers waiting to be tackled. Every week or so, I would go into delta math or my math lab and add the last week or so’s digital assignments to our online gradebook.

Now that everything is digital, I need a plan in place to keep track of what has and hasn’t been graded. That’s where my free printable grading list comes in!

If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you’re either a mathequalslove super fan or you’re looking for some free downloads. If it’s the former, thank you! You guys are the reason that I keep blogging.

I hope you enjoy! Hopefully you gleaned at least one helpful tip or trick from this post.

You will obviously need to edit this to fit you and your unique teaching situation. It’s currently set up for three preps. You can use find and replace to change the names of all the preps at once.

You’ll also want to change the name on the cover, obviously. I’ve also added a version that has the prep names removed so you could handwrite them in yourself or use it for something that isn’t even lesson plans. I could see labeling the sections as Before School, Planning Period, and After School and using it as a to do list book.

If you need more pages, you can duplicate the last lesson plan page to make the dates extend as far as you need them to. Of course, you’ll have to manually change the dates. Fonts Needed: Century Gothic, Fredoka One

Free Download of Printable Tutoring Log

Tutoring Log (PDF) (2566 downloads )

Tutoring Log (Editable Publisher File ZIP) (1624 downloads )

Really, when it comes down to it, all I want flexibility.  I want to be able to change things when they aren’t working.  I’m tired of buying a planner and spending a year dreaming about when I get to buy a new planner because it just isn’t working for me.  My husband introduced me to the Staples Arc System. It’s a discbound system that lets you rearrange your pages to your heart’s content.  

You can add pages whenever you want and wherever you want.  It gives me the flexibility of a three-ring binder without the annoying bulk of a binder.  Plus, it lies completely flat!  Shaun is also using the Staples arc system for his planner, so we felt like we could justify buying the Staples Arc Punch.

I designed my own weekly spread back in May, and I’ve been using it to see what I *really* want in a planner.  After using my own pages for a few days, I figured out what was working and wasn’t working.  I’ve redesigned my weekly spread pages, and I’ll be blogging about those soon.  Promise.

Inside, I have a clear zippered poly pocket that holds post-it notes, stickers, etc.

I also invested in a set of 8 dividers for my notebook to keep things more organized.  I bought these from the Martha Stewart line at Staples because they were cheaper than the Arc brand.  Plus, I got a set of 8 dividers instead of 5.

I like that my dividers are slightly see-through because I can see the header page for the next section through it.

I still haven’t decided if I’m perfectly happy with the way I have stuff ordered in my notebook yet.  But, that’s okay since I can easily reorder the pages.

My plan at the moment is to have the first tab contain my to-do list and info on current projects.

The next section contains my calendar pages.  My husband made this version of our school calendar for us both to include in our planners.  Have I mentioned that I’m super excited about getting to work in the same building as my husband next year?!?

For my planner pages, my goal was to have a way to keep track of several things:

School Stuff – Faculty meetings, meetings with parents, deadlines for submitting things, student council meetings, days when various student organizations will be absent, school sporting events, etc.  Having this all written on my calendar helps me figure out what days to not schedule a test or what days are open to schedule a student council event.

Personal Stuff – Doctor and dentist appointments, birthdays, reminders to do things like pay the rent, etc.

Good Things – I love reading the One Good Thing blog.  The teachers who participate in this blog commit to blog each day about something good that happened during their day.  Sometimes it’s something big.  Other times, it’s a small thing that would often go unnoticed.  But, it’s always good.  If you haven’t subscribed to this blog, you are definitely missing out!  The posts there never fail to put a smile on my face.  While I don’t have the commitment necessary to write a daily blog post, I do want to build a habit of recognizing the good in every day.  I started doing this at the end of last school year in my planner, and it was definitely my favorite thing to look back at every day.  So, I want to include a space to record something good about each day.

Meal Planning – Being married means I have to do a lot more thinking about meal planning than I ever did when I was single.  I’m not a serious meal planner.  This will probably be used more in retrospect to record what we eat to help us come up with ideas later on.  Or, if I really get on top of things, maybe I will start planning ahead.

What you WON’T find in this planner is my plans on what to teach on what day.  I plan to keep these in a google document.  I’ve never been required to turn in my lesson plans, so I’ve never been good at writing down and recording my plans to look back at later.  I’ve tried to do so many, many, many times, but I always get frustrated when plans change.  It seems like I never get everything done in a class period that I thought I could get done.  I’m thinking that having them in a google document will let me copy and paste them to the appropriate day which should lessen the sting a bit…  When I get a lesson planning document I’m happy with, I’ll be sure sure to blog about that, too!

Okay.  Enough talking about what I want it to contain.  Let’s look at pictures.  

Calendar Pages

For these calendar pages, I created a basic weekly template.  Then, I typed in all of the dates in an excel file and used mail merge to put together my planner pages.  This was so much faster than trying to type directly on the pages.  

I only made my planner pages go through June 2017 because I figure by next summer I’ll be itching to try out a new planner page design.  To keep track of dates that don’t fall in my planner’s range, I included a section for future dates.

Other Planner Pages

Address Book Pages

One thing that planning a wedding (and writing post-wedding thank you notes) taught me was that I need a better organizing system for my addresses.

Calculator Sign-Out Sheets

My school provides students with graphing calculators instead of making them purchase their own.  This is largely because we are in a low socio-economic area where many families could not afford to purchase a graphing calculator for their students.  I have a classroom set of calculators that serves us well.  The problem arises when our students need a graphing calculator to take the ACT.  In four years of teaching, I still haven’t come up with a good system for tracking who has borrowed which calculator.  Usually, I resort to writing calculator numbers down on post-it notes, but they can get buried in my messy desk and lost.  If students seem me write down their calculator check-out in my book, they’ll know that they must return it in a timely manner or I will track them down.

Birthdays

One thing I want to do a better job of this year is keeping track of birthdays.  When someone takes the time to send you a birthday card, it just makes you feel special.  I want to do that more this year.  I overheard a student say a couple of weeks ago that only one person had wished her a happy birthday on her birthday.  Her own parents hadn’t even remembered her birthday.  How sad is that!  This was convicting to me because I only do an okay job of recognizing birthdays in my classroom.  

Usually the way I deal with birthdays is this: If you tell me it’s your birthday, I’ll give you a birthday badge sticker to wear.  Sometimes, I’ll even throw in a “Happy Birthday” certificate that I picked up at Dollar Tree.  What about the students that are too shy to tell me it’s there birthday?  I need to make a plan to recognize all of my students on their birthday.  

I still remember my 7th grade math teacher: Mrs. Sellars.  She gave each of us a pencil on our birthday.  If students had a birthday that fell in the summer months, she gave them a pencil on their half-birthday.  This year, I want to recognize all of my students (and coworkers) on their birthdays.  To help me keep track of this, I made some birthday tracking sheets to keep in my planner.  

Future Dates 

I’m always running into the problem of having a date I want to put in my planner when my planner doesn’t go that far.  I decided that making a sheet to record dates for the next four years should help with this.  Now, I have a place to record random dates I want to keep an eye on such as driver’s license expirations, teacher registration expirations, and other random stuff.  

Items Borrowed and Items Loaned

I perpetually have students coming to me to borrow stuff.  After four years, students have learned that if you need scissors, glue, colored pencils, markers, rulers, or any crafty stuff that I’ll probably have it.  The problem is that these things have a tendency to not come back.  I’d track down the student who borrowed it, but I often don’t remember who that was.  And, I often don’t realize it never came back until a week or so later.  This year, I’m going to keep a log of items that are borrowed so I can ensure that they are returned.  Students won’t be able to leave the the room with the borrowed item until it’s logged in my book.  

I also created a sheet for items that other people have loaned me.  It’s rare that I borrow something from someone, but it does happen.  

Meeting Notes

I have a new principal next year who promises that he rarely calls a faculty meeting.  My previous principal insisted on having a faculty meeting every Friday.  Even though there will be less meetings to attend, I still want to keep organized at these meetings.  My usual approach to a faculty meeting has been to take notes on a calendar page in my planner.  This is usually less than ideal.  So, I designed this sheet to help me organize my meeting notes.

As Student Council sponsor, I host a usually weekly meeting for my student council kids to discuss upcoming events that they are planning.  I’ve never been organized with student council stuff, and it makes it incredibly hard to find things later.  I adapted my Meeting Notes page to a Student Council Meeting Notes page.  I’m hoping this leads to more organized student council meetings this year!

Parent Contact Log

One area I know I need to improve in is parent contact.  I hate talking on the phone.  It scares me.  But, I know that contacting parents means I will be better able to meet my students’ diverse needs.  This year, I am going to try to contact five parents each week (at a minimum).  I wanted a place to keep track of the parents I contact and take notes on what was discussed.  This is what I came up with:

Password Tracker

As a teacher, I have so many passwords to keep track of it’s not funny.  I’ve always relied on trying to use the same password if at all possible.  This works for the most part.  But, there’s always that website that wants 14 letter passwords with 5 special characters or something crazy.  Keeping track of my various passwords will help me keep my sanity and save time by not having to go through the “Forgot My Password” page at least once a week.

Project Planner

Okay, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to use this for.  I might use it in the student council section of my notebook to help various events such as the Veterans Day Assembly or the Annual Blood Drive.  I also play a large role in preparing for the Awards Assembly at the end of the year which involves lots of small to-do list items.  

Reading Log

Now that grad school is done, I think I might finally have time to start reading for pleasure again.  I recently got a library card from a nearby town that allows me to access free audio books and e-books.  The type column is to differentiate between e-books, audio books, and well actual physical books.

Tutoring Log

My school pays teachers to do after school tutoring, but there’s one catch.  We have to keep a log of our hours and the students we help in order to get paid.  I often help students after school, but I’m terrible at keeping records.  This means I rarely get any compensation for my time.  This year, I am going to have a tutoring sign-in sheet for students to sign when they enter and exit my room.  Then, I’ll transfer the information (neatly) to my tutoring log.  

To-Do Lists

Last week, I read a post on Amie Albrecht’s blog about One Minute Surveys.  It instantly brought to mind the exit tickets I used to give my students at the beginning of my first year of teaching.  As a pre-service teacher, I read tons of teacher books and read every math teacher blog I could get my hands on to help me learn how to best run my classroom.  All the advice seemed to point to using every minute of class wisely and bringing closure to every lesson.  

So, I jumped into giving exit tickets every single day.  This did not last for long.  First year teacher me was overwhelmed with all the tasks that teaching brings with it, and this was one thing that fell by the wayside.

I think the reason it fell by the wayside so quickly was because it was an extra thing that had to be planned every single day.  Now, as a teacher going into her fifth year of teaching, I realize the importance of automating as many things as possible.  

I want to get daily feedback from my students.  I want to get to know my students better.  I want to know which concepts they are grasping and which concepts are making them grasp at straws.  

Sure, I could probably make up exit ticket questions off the top of my head now and be just fine flying by the seat of my pants.  But, I’ve got a better plan.

I’m taking my favorite exit ticket questions and making sheets for each question that can be printed and chopped ahead of time.  

Each day, I’ll be able to pull out a prepared stack of exit tickets that match what I’m hoping to learn from my students that day.

I did an online search for exit ticket ideas and compiled my favorites.  These should be able to be used with almost any subject/grade level.

I’ve designed them to print 6 to a letter-sized page.  I’m thinking this will make them easy to chop with the paper chopper.

Exit Ticket Ideas

3 Things I Remember from Today’s Lesson

Today’s Muddiest Point

I think I’m starting to…

My favorite part of today’s lesson was…because…

I used to think…but now I know…

What do you think the goal of today’s lesson was?

What was the most important thing you learned in class today?

Your best friend was absent today. Summarize today’s lesson.

What is one thing your teacher could do to help you?

What is one thing you could do to better prepare for your next quiz?

What would you like us to review tomorrow?

Rate your understanding of today’s lesson a scale of 1-10. Explain.

The best part of class today was…

Summarize today’s lesson in EXACTLY 10 words.

You’re the teacher. Write a quiz question (and answer!) over today’s lesson.

Draw a picture to demonstrate the most important concept you learned today.

What was the most challenging part of today’s lesson? Why?

If you were the teacher, what part of today’s lesson would you take out? Why?

Draw an emoji that represents your understanding of today’s lesson. Explain.

I wish my teacher knew…

The thing that helps me learn best is…

My favorite thing we do in class is…because…

My least favorite thing we do in class is…because…

What are you looking forward to doing this weekend?

Weekly High? Weekly Low?

This class is A) too slow B) too fast C) just right. Explain.

If I could change one thing about this class…

An unanswered question I still have is…

Tuesday was my first day back.  Monday was the first day back for my students, but life intervenes and you have to take a day off every once in a while.  I was so proud of myself for making it through the entirety of last semester without catching any sicknesses.  Unfortunately, I ended up developing a sinus infection and pneumonia over break that meant I missed the first day back.

I was able to spend 12 days of my Christmas break in Australia with my fiance and his family.  It was so weird experiencing Christmas as a SUMMER holiday!  Being sick almost the entire time was definitely not fun, but I still had an amazing time.  The time to leave and come back home came way too soon.  Leaving was made a bit easier by the fact that my fiance and I got some good news on the visa front, so we’ve been able to finalize our wedding date for this March.  Guys, this means I’m getting married this year!!!  

Since I still wasn’t feeling 100% when I came back to work on Tuesday, I took it easy and gave my students tasks that they could work on without a ton of help.  First, I had my students fill out a reflection sheet.  There were three parts.

Six Word Reflections.  Students were asked to summarize 2015 in six words.  They were also supposed to write the six words that they hoped would define 2016.  The six word limit was inspired by the six-word memoir movement.  My kids had a lot of trouble with the six word limit.  A lot of them interpreted it as “six phrases” instead…  

Keep/Change/Start/Stop

If you’re not familiar with Keep Change Start Stop Reflections, I have shared about them before on my blog.

I had them complete two of these reflection forms.

The first one was for them to decide what they wanted to keep/change/start/stop in 2016.  This could be about school or just about their personal life.

The second one was for students to reflection on changes they would like to see in our class.  I personalized mine to say Ms. Hagan should…  This was my students’ chance to speak up about how they felt about how my class is structured.  I warned them that if they suggested something like “stop teaching us math” it wasn’t going to happen.

In reading through their responses, I found that I much preferred to read their own Keep/Change/Start/Stop reflections because it gave me a glimpse into their present life and their future aspirations.  Most of the suggestions for me centered around wanting us to do less work.  Sorry guys.  Free days and movie days just aren’t my thing.

After the reflection sheet, I handed back semester tests to my students.  The semester test was made up of released end-of-instruction questions from the state of Oklahoma.  I made sure to pick out questions that covered what we had learned first semester. It was 100% multiple choice, and I gave students a cover sheet to record their answers on for easy grading.  When I handed them back, I kept their cover sheets and just returned their problem sets and work.  I then gave them a blank cover sheet and instructed that that they could use any resource to redo their semester test.  This could mean working together, researching problems on the internet, etc.  They were also given the percentage they made on their semester test to let them know what percent of their answers needed to be changed.

Some of my classes got together in groups and worked diligently.  Others just sat there like bumps on a log which frustrated me.  I guess I did give them a two week timeline to get these turned in, so it’s partially my fault.

I’ve still got a few more lessons to teach and semester tests to write/give/grade. You might consider this blog post to be an exercise in productive procrastination…

At the end of each unit when students have demonstrated mastery on all of that unit’s quizzes, students fill out this reflection sheet, staple their graded quizzes to it, and turn it in with their completed notebooks.

I ask my students to reflect on each unit.  I, on the other hand, am going to reflect on my first semester of using reflection sheets.

Here are a few of the lessons I have learned.

Not putting a space for students to write their name on this sheet was a huge mistake.

And, apparently putting a box between “Unit” and “Reflection” is not a big enough clue to students that they should write the unit number in the box…

It’s been interesting to read the students “Why?” answers for which skill they are most confident with and which skill they found most difficult.  Some students, of course, write things like “#2 because it’s easy” or “#5 because it’s hard.”  Other students have actually taken the time to reflect on what made a specific skill easy or hard for them.

Either way, I’m excited that when I had back the packets at the end of the year to review for the end-of-instruction exam that students will automatically have a list of which skill they need to work on the most in each unit to prepare.  If I choose to do this again, I will be more adamant about students explaining why something was easy/hard.

I like that students have to go back and look at their errors and formulate a plan for avoiding those errors in the future.  Each reflection sheet is sort of a note to themselves to read/act on in the future.

I had big hopes for the summary section, but it hasn’t worked out exactly as I’d anticipated.  For the one word summary, I had meant for students to choose one math word that summed up the unit.  But, a lot of my students are picking words that describe how they feel about the unit such as “challenging.”  Or, they’re like my stats students who summarize our box plot unit as “boxy.”

For the one sentence summary, I’m realizing that many of my students don’t know how to write a sentence.  One word is not a sentence!  These sentences are almost always their opinion of the unit.  I guess I’m still getting feedback about what they feel, so it’s not what I was intending but it’s also not useless.

Lastly, students have to do a  mind map summary.  Mind map.  Concept map.  Bubble map.  Web.  Whatever you want to call it.  I had this vision that students would comb through their notes and put a lot of thought into this.  Ummm…no.  They copy the titles of a few units into bubbles and call it good.  A few students have been making a number line of sorts and ranking the skills from easy to hard.  Basically, I’ve been letting students turn in their reflection sheets if they have something written there.

I need to do a better job of holding kids accountable for doing things the way I want them to.

At the bottom of the form, there’s a place for me to mark off if they submitted their reflection sheet, completed quizzes, and notebook for grading.  I keep the reflection sheet/quizzes in a filing cabinet, and I’ll pass them back at the end of the year for them to review.  I’m hoping this makes review go much smoother.  

Every year, I tell myself that I’m going to do a better job of staying in contact with parents.  And, every year, I seem to fail at accomplishing that goal.  You see, I have this fear of talking on the phone.  No, that’s not quite accurate.  I have no problem talking on the phone.  I have a fear, though, of calling people on the phone.  If I can text you, e-mail you, write you a letter, or send you smoke signals, I will do that before I pick up the phone.  Calling people is just scary.  

What if I accidentally dial the wrong number?  What if I call at an inconvenient time?  What if I call someone at work and they get in trouble with their boss?  When I’m faced with making a call, I will sometimes sit and think about all the things that could go wrong for minutes.  Minutes.  Finally, I type the number into my phone.  And, I sit there and stress some more.  Finally, I force myself to hit the call button because then there’s no turning back.

And, almost always, it all works out fine.  Then, I start to wonder why I was even so stressed in the first place.  Even when I’m calling about something that’s less than positive, parents always seem grateful that I’ve called.  I tell myself I won’t stress out so much the next time, but I still do.

This year, I’ve decided to do something about this.

Behold, the parent info sheet that I’ll be sending home with students with their syllabus.

We have parent contact information available in our student information system, but I want different details than that provides me.

The first part is all pretty normal stuff.  I want to know from parents what the BEST way to contact them is.  If they never check their e-mail address, it doesn’t do me any good to send them an e-mail.  Also, asking for the best time to call them helps calm some of my fears of inconveniencing them.

This next part is what I’m most excited about.  I want to know WHEN parents/guardians want me to contact them.  If I know that someone wants to be contacted, I should hopefully be less scared about actually making that contact.  Plus, I think it will be informative to see which circles a parent checks.

Then, I want to give parents/guardians a space to let me know anything else they feel is pertinent about their student.  Since students will be returning these, I am giving them the option to contact me via school phone or e-mail to discuss.  

The back of the information sheet has some other stuff I need to get out of the way: proof of reading the syllabus and permission slip for my grad school project.

I am SOOOOO ready to have this grad school project and my master’s degree done!  I’m currently scheduled to finish in March!

I guess there is always the concern that students will fill this out instead of their parents.  But, I’m not sure there is anything I can do about that.  When I do call parents, I think it will be very clear if they have read the syllabus and understand my class policies.  If they are unaware of what is going on, we can discuss the possibility that their student forged their signature.  I really, really, really hope I don’t have to deal with this.