As stationery lovers, we take notebooks seriously. We know that different kinds of notebooks work for different things, so we have a few to choose from. If you’re not sure which is right for you, or if you’re buying a teacher notebook as a present, this guide will help you decide which notebook is best.
What are the options?
We offer an A4 hardback notebook (which has lots of different types of notes pages), a B5 hardback lined notebook, and an A5 softcover lined notebook.
All About our A5 Notebooks
Our A5 Notebooks are designed to be planner notebooks – so they’re designed to easily fit into the inner pocket of your planner. Our Teacher Planner, Weekly Planner, Daily Planner, and Teacher Training Planners all have a sturdy pocket on the inside of the cover, which will perfectly hold one of these notebooks. They’re available in all the same designs as the planners are, so you can get one to match or choose another favourite design.
They have a flexible card covering, so they’re not hardback like our other notebooks but still designed to be sturdy enough for a teacher’s needs. They have 35 double-sided lined pages, so they’re compact but with plenty of space to write, and have a stapled book binding. We keep them priced low so you can use them as much as you want without worrying about ‘saving space’ or keeping them for special notes! You can grab a few and keep your current one in your planner pocket, and use it to jot down all your notes, ideas, random thoughts and things to remember before you can transfer the most important notes and ideas into your bigger planner.
A4 vs B5 Notebooks – What’s the same?
Our A4 Notebooks and B5 Notebooks have a lot in common, since they’re both designed with high-quality and high-usefulness in mind! Both of these notebooks, just like the A5 ones, are available in all the same cover designs as the planner, so you can match or get different notebooks in all of your favourite designs!
Let’s talk hardware – they are both bound with a sturdy, metal spiral which is one continuous piece of metal. This makes the notebooks super durable – as former teachers ourselves, we know what our stationery goes through in a school year! We’ve also designed them to be hardback with metal corner protectors, so you can fling them in and out of bags and lug them around school all year. The metal colour varies to match whichever design you pick. They also both use thick, high-quality 120gsm paper that is lovely to write on.
What’s inside the notebooks?
Here’s where the main difference is – the B5 Notebooks contain 200 double-sided lined pages, while the A4 Notebooks…have a little bit more to them! The B5 notebooks are perfect for brain dumps, ideas, lists, meetings, and all kinds of notes – and the pages aren’t numbered, so you can feel free to rip out pages and pin them on to notice boards or take them along to meetings.
The A4 Notebooks also have 200 pages, but these are split into 4 different sections, with tabbed dividers so you can easily find your way around. The A4 Notebook also has an inside cover pocket (which can hold an A5 notebook…notebooks inside notebooks!) and an elastic closure.
The A4 Notebooks are great for all kinds of people as, unlike the Teacher Planner, they don’t contain any specific reference to teaching or lesson planning. This means they can be used by all kinds of professions, including school management, administrators, teaching assistants, school business managers, and trainee teachers.
The A4 Notebook Sections:
Notes – 52 lined notes pages which are all numbered, with a contents page at the start of the section. This is super helpful for keeping your notes organised, as you can create your own contents and note down which pages have which notes. This section is ideal for planning your curriculum, and any kind of notes that you’ll want to add to and be able to find and reference later.
To Do – This section is filled with To Do lists! Each page has 4 To Do lists, with 208 to do lists in total. Each To Do list has a Top Priorities section to organise your tasks. These pages are perfect for writing yourself daily To Do lists, or breaking down projects into smaller tasks.
Ideas – This section is for letting your creative side out and coming up with ideas! There are two kinds of ideas pages in this section: 32 dotted pages and 19 blank mind maps. The dotted pages are great for unstructured notes, or things you want to draw out practically like seating plans or science experiments. The mind maps are great for letting your mind go wild and sparking new ideas.
Meetings/CPD – This section contains 9 CPD notes pages for tracking your professional development, and 35 Meeting Notes pages, so you can bring this notebook to all of your meetings and keep all those notes in one place. You can then head to other pages, like a mind map or To Do list, to start jotting down ideas for things brought up in the meetings. This section has numbered pages and a contents page, so you can keep these professional notes well organised.
We hope this has helped to clear up the differences between all of our notebooks! Everyone works differently, so think about how you like to get organised to decide which notebook (or notebooks!) would be best for you. Then the only question is…which beautiful cover design will you choose?
