Parts of my Library Planner

This one is a long one, but I hope it helps some librarians (or anyone).

Once you’ve purchased your planner materials, you need something to go inside it. I honestly feel that what goes in your planner is personal and needs to be tailored to what you’ll use. While you can find many teacher planners, when I searched for school librarian planners, I found only four. Although one is only 12.50, you would have to print and assemble it yourself. A second one is almost thirty dollars and also has to be printed and assembled yourself. A third is mass produced through Amazon and doesn’t have everything I would want. Finally there’s the Demco planner. While I agree that it looks like a fantastic purchase, I just cannot justify spending that much money on a planner that I’m only going to use for one year. For all the librarians that do purchase it, I hope you enjoy it. I might invest in it one year just to see what the fuss is about. For now, I’ll continue to use the one I’ve been developing and customizing for the last two years.

Once you’ve assembled the basics of the planner (covers, dividers, rings), it’s time to assemble the innards. I have ten different sections in my planner currently, although not all of them have been filled yet. In addition, one section has four parts. I’m still working on multiple pages. I am fully about creating my own pages that work for me, but also using the resources that are available to me.

Monthly overview

The very first section of my planner is my monthly planner. I don’t do anything fancy for this, just a simple free printable. The point of this section is to have an at a glance look at how my month stacks up. I make sure to write down all my appointments, plans, and other things I need to keep track of. I can glance at the page on a Monday morning and know what is happening that week. I do not list my daily schedule here since that’s a later section.

Goals page/ SMART Goals

My district requires that teachers set SMART goals every year. So far, my principal hasn’t asked me to set these, but I also want to be prepared when I am asked so I’ve set a section for my goals. I looked at different goal sheets, but didn’t find one that fit what I wanted.

I not only wanted space to write my goal, but also keep track of progress so this page worked the best for me. By breaking my goal(s) into more manageable segments, I am able to better reach my goal(s).

Grant writing

I have a pretty decent sized budget, but I also have a library that needs to be updated. Numberwise, my library has a lot of books, but many of them are outdated or need to be replaced because they’re worn. I’ve been looking at grants and I’m hoping to apply for some to update various sections of the library.

I’m also looking at Donors’ Choose and Adopt a Classroom.

Professional Development

Since I’m new in my position (this is only my third year), I try to do as much professional development as I can. I hate to leave my students for the day so I try to do as much online professional development as I can. I hope to attend the AASL convention one year, but so far haven’t made any plans towards it. I did make it to the GLMA (which is my state group) this past summer and had a great time.

For now, I purchased this professional development from The Trapped Librarian. Follett has also offered a few if you use Destiny as your collection management system. And finally, I signed up for a few of the Future Ready webinars from All4Ed. Now all I have to do is find time to watch them!

One thing I like to do while I’m working on different things in the library (when I’m not teaching classes) is listen to the School Librarians United podcast. The nice part about that is you can pick and choose which episodes you listen to. I’ve definitely downloaded some of the information that she shares with it.

Other than that, I do a lot of district offered PD (most of which doesn’t actually apply to my job, but is mandated) and also whatever I can find with our RESA (Regional Education Services Agencies).

I keep my certificates and information in this section.

Collaboration

As much as I would love to collaborate with my teachers on a weekly or biweekly basis, neither of our schedules allow it. Last year I spent a lot of the year getting myself together and learning my job, but this year I’m looking to do more collaboration.

Instead of meeting with my teachers and planning my lessons with them, I’m working on a different form of collaboration. I’ve taken the standards for my third, fourth, and fifth graders and am addressing some of them in the library. For my kinder, first, and second graders, I am doing more of a slow slide into the library. We’re doing a lot of hands-on activities and crafts that relate to books. We’re also incorporating movement and I’m beginning to introduce yoga. My pre-school will continue with the way they’ve been with movement, a story, and beginning to explore books. I’ve also added yoga to their classes.

This section of my planner will include which standards I’m hoping to address in the library. It will also have the lessons I’m developing for the science and social studies classes which will be in the library two times a month. Not only does it give them another chance in the library, it allows them to see it’s not just for reading.

Finally, I’m working on a research unit that will begin in kindergarten and carry all the way through to fifth grade, giving my students a good basis in research before they leave elementary school. I’m meeting with my teachers to find what they most feel needs to be covered.

This section will change over time as I grow my ability to collaborate with my teachers. This is how I plan to keep track of different collaboration projects.

Lessons

This section will eventually hold my three year cycle of lesson plans for the grade levels. My plan is to develop three years of plans that I can use as a loop. Since I combine lessons for kindergarten through second and third through fifth, that would mean I have lesson plans that will carry them through the years they’re at my school. Of course, I might change out the books depending on what is published, but this will allow me to not have to write lesson plans every year.

I will also have a section for my preschoolers, which I will use yearly since they will not be repeating that grade (and it will change when they are in kindergarten).

Finally this section will also hold my lesson plans for my research unit(s). I plan to begin in kindergarten with building a research basis so that by the time my students finish fifth grade, they will have a solid platform for completing research as they move on.

Work Notes

In addition to being a spot to keep documents that the district gives us (policies and procedures) and the documents that my school gives me (like room assignments, etc), this section will be notes from different meetings I have to attend. I don’t really have a template for this, but will keep notes and other things here.