Earlier this year we introduced our Weekly Planner to our range. We love that it’s different to our Teacher Planner, so our planner range can suit the needs of even more people and you can choose the planner the best fits your schedule and the way you work. But we also are often asked – which planner should I buy? If you want to figure out which planner is best for you, we’re here to explain a little more about each planner to help you decide! Today we’re comparing the classic Teacher Planner and Weekly Planner, since they both provide you with a double page weekly spread – so if you know a weekly planner is for you, let’s have a look at them in more detail and see which one you prefer.
What’s the same?
Both the Teacher Planner and the Weekly Planner are A4 hardback planners, with 120gsm paper and a sturdy metal coil. They can both be personalised, and they both run from August to July. So they’re both the great quality you can expect from The Positive Teacher Company, and they’re both nice and big with plenty of room to write in. They also both have beautiful cover options, though they are different. The Teacher Planner comes in a wide range of different designs, whereas the Weekly Planner has a linen cover, in either sage with gold hardware or dusk grey with silver hardware.
The Weekly Pages
Let’s take a closer look at what the weekly pages look like in each planner. The Teacher Planner weekly pages run Monday to Friday in a vertical layout, and each day has 6 blank boxes for you to use in whatever way best suits you. If you’re a primary teacher, you could use each box as a different lesson, or if you’re a secondary teacher it might be better to use the boxes for different periods with different classes. If you’re a member of SLT that does some teaching, you could use your boxes to arrange your day into a morning To Do list, followed by teaching a class, then lunch duty, then an afternoon meeting, and have notes in each box for each task that day. There’s also a smaller box at the start and end of each day, for you to note down before and after school activities like morning meetings or after school clubs, or to note down important things like theme days or birthdays.
The Weekly Planner is a little different. It’s still a vertical layout, but this one runs Monday to Sunday, so includes the weekend. This might be good for staff who work in private schools if you sometimes have school duties or activities on a weekend so you need those days included. The days are also different, as instead of the 6 blank boxes, you have an hourly timed day that runs from 7am to 6pm. There’s also a space at the top to note all-day events to remember. This layout might be better for non-teaching staff that work in schools, like members of SLT or business managers, who don’t need to organise their days around the lesson timetables.
What else is there?
Both planners have much more included than just the weekly pages! The Teacher Planner has more planning pages and resources for you to plan out your entire school year. It has pages to track all the information you’ll need, like key info about your school, resources to remember, and a usernames and passwords tracker. It has sections for personal and professional development, like goals, a wellbeing review, reading log, and professional development log. It also has lots of planning pages, including a whole year overview, long term plan, 6 medium term planning pages with ideas and To Do list pages for each term, and a seating plan and timetable for each term. Plus there are helpful pages like meeting notes, groups pages and assessment records. So the Teacher Planner has a real focus on planning out your school year in terms of teaching and lesson planning.
The Weekly Planner has lots of helpful pages, but with less of a focus on lesson planning. It has a year overview and timetables, so you can fill out our schedule if you have some teaching responsibilities or plan out your or your staff’s weeks. It also has records pages, a contacts page, a page to track usernames and passwords, and dotted notes pages. So the Weekly Planner is more focused on keeping organised on a week to week basis.
So who is each planner best for?
The Teacher Planner is a one-stop-shop for everything a teacher may need. You can bring it to your PPA or non-contact time, to meetings, planning meetings, even parent nights, and you’ll always have all of your key information with you in one place. It’s like building your own reference guide for your own planning, while having a weekly planner to organise each day. The Weekly Planner is more focused on organising each day down to the hour, with space for key information and notes.
We can make suggestions and give ideas, but really it’s down to how you work and what you prefer. The Teacher Planner was, of course, designed with teachers in mind, but there are other ways you can use this planner, like if you’re a subject lead and you want to have a yearly plan for how your subject will be taught. You can use the planning pages to plan your subject across all year groups. Then you could have a separate planner for your own classroom, whether that’s another Teacher Planner, a Weekly Planner, or a Daily Planner.
Some teachers might also prefer to use the Weekly Planner. Maybe your school has certain documents you must use for planning, so you can use those for your lesson and curriculum planning and then use the Weekly Planner to organise your days. The Weekly Planner is also great for any non-teaching staff who work across the academic year, like business managers, members of SLT, or SENDCOs. If you have a heavy workload and each day looks a little bit different, the Weekly Planner could be really helpful for organising your days by the hour.
If you want to stay super organised, we also make planner stickers (find them here!) that are perfect for either planner, so you can easily mark out your break and lunch duties, assemblies, non-contact time, and lots of other school activities.
We’d love to know which planner you chose and why, we always love to hear your feedback! If you’re still not sure, have a look at our TikTok below to take a look into each of these planners. We hope you find just what you need!
@positiveteacherco Wondering about our NEW Weekly Planner and how it compares to our Teacher Planner? Here's a video showing you all the differences. Our Teacher Planners are available now https://buff.ly/3FZlq8N and our Weekly Planners launch 17.02.24
♬ original sound - TPTC
