But the truth is, those Pinterest teachers don’t always know what spoke most to my students about our lessons. And though I could certainly reverse-engineer my lessons so that those lovely Pinterest pages will appear to naturally align, that does seem a little backward. This well-trained Waldorf teacher knows that the work should respond to the needs and interests of the students — not the other way around.

So, over the years, I’ve given some intention and developed systems (goodness knows, I love a good system) that guide the creation of our main lesson pages.

The Content

The first thing is deciding on the content. The system I’ve developed for this is one of my favorite things. It was an epiphany that absolutely changed my teaching.

You see, when I first started teaching, I allowed the main lesson pages and the review content to naturally arise out of the lesson. Sometimes we would write a composition about the story. Other times we would do a guided drawing. It all just depended on what the content seemed to ask for.

The problem with that approach was that it sometimes meant that we went weeks without doing a guided drawing, or we might do three guided drawings in a week. With this inconsistent and varied approach was that I couldn’t rely on my students getting the skill-building practice that is so essential to their growth. Though allowing the work to naturally arise is probably the most holistic approach, I feel that skill-development is just too important to leave to chance.

The Solution

So a few years ago, I settled on a main lesson review content plan that guides our weekly work. Each week, we work on three main pieces of content:

• An independent composition
• A guided drawing
• A dictation

I could write an entire post about these three pieces of content, but here’s a quick overview.

Composition

I use the term composition to refer to pieces of writing that the students write independently. I prefer this term because it can apply to different types of content — summaries of imaginative stories, reports about animals, etc. It’s a much more useful term than “essay” or “story.”

Usually, we write compositions on Tuesdays (I make sure to tell a really good, image-rich story on Monday so they’ll have lots of ideas), I correct them that night and we put them in our main lesson books on Tuesdays.

Guided Drawing

This is a full page drawing that I guide to help work on drawing skills. It’s generally a fun way to remember stories together, while still having a skill-building lesson. We usually do these on Thursdays.

Dictation

I’ve written before about my dictation rhythm here and here — and it’s one of my favorite things. Here’s how it works.

• I create a piece of writing about one of the stories they’ll hear that week (or some sort of overview content). I break that writing down into daily chunks. When we first started in 3rd grade, they got one sentence each day. Now in 4th grade it depends. It’s sometimes more than one sentence.
• Each day I dictate the sentence for the day, they listen and they write it in their dictation book.
• We correct their writing together, and talk about whatever phonics or grammar rules we’re working on.
• Depending on the grade, the students receive a dictation quiz at the end of the week. Now in 4th grade, they’re getting a fill-in-the-blank quiz. I’ve chosen meaningful words for the week, they study them and the fill-in-the blank dictation quiz takes the place of a traditional spelling test. It’s a nice and satisfying way to wrap up the week. You can see a sample of our 4th grade dictation quiz here.
• At the end of the week (or sometimes on Monday of the following week) we put that dictation in our books.

Here are some of the things I love about dictation:

• It allows me to expose the students to beautiful writing. I want them to do plenty of their own independent composition (which I think Waldorf teachers don’t do enough of), but I also want them to be exposed to beautiful writing samples.
• I can naturally incorporate phonics and grammar lessons with content that is engaging and interesting, instead of boring, unrelated grammar exercises.
• Because it is such an essential part of our daily routine, I know that my students are going to practice spelling, punctuation, and grammar every single day.

Okay, so those are the three main pieces of content we work on each week. Now, of course, this is definitely flexible. For example, we often don’t do a new composition during the last week of a block, as we’re finishing things up and getting ready to turn in.

Writing Pages

So, if you’re following along, you’ll see that most weeks we have two pieces of writing that go into our books, so that’s what I’m going to address for the rest of this post.

(I’ll just say briefly, about guided drawings, I’m much less intentional about planning the specific drawing skills we’ll be working on. If I were a more skill artist, I would probably have an art curriculum that I moved through as we completed these guided drawings. Instead, I just let the stories and their images guide our work.)

So let’s talk about how to format writing pages.

First of all — come up with a system that your students will use throughout the year to set up and complete the page. The system that you use will depend on the grade, and maybe even the individual student. You want to give them a structure that will help them keep their writing clear. Here’s what I’ve done.

Grade One — Capital and Lower Case

First grade is all about learning the letters and their sounds — with lower case letters coming at the end of the year. For each letter we drew a picture that had the letter hidden within and we did a letter page that included the capital letter, the lower case letter (we hadn’t filled it in yet on this page) and a few words from the story that begin with the letter.

By the end of the year, we wrote short sentences together, but we were just beginning with that work, so I did not get too intentional about a page set-up system.

Grade Two — Sky, Earth and Water

In second grade, we did much more writing, so we needed a proper system for writing in our main lesson books. I used a page set-up that many Waldorf teachers have used through the years — sky, earth and water.

To set up the page, we used the “mama bear” side of our block crayons (I actually think we started the year with “papa bear” and switched halfway through) and drew stripes across the page in yellow (sky), green (earth) and blue (water). It did a pretty good job of helping us to form our letters properly, though occasionally kids’ lines curved on the page. I was always amazed to see that even with their curved lines, they were careful to make sure that lower case letters stayed in the earth area, while capitals reached up into the sky.

The other benefit of this format was that it gave us good imaginative language for talking about where the letters were supposed to be. Lower case y and g “dip into the water”, while h, k and l “reach up to the sky.”

One other note about second grade writing — if I had a student who really struggled with forming the letters properly, I would not hesitate to switch to traditional primary paper with dashed lines across the middle. We used this paper in our primary composition books for “kid writing” (see this post for more info about that) and I think it really helped kids to know how to form their letters. I started out the year thinking that if it was necessary, I would have kids do their final drafts on lined paper and glue them in to the main lesson books. It just happened that my students did pretty well with the sky, earth and water set-up, so I didn’t worry about it.

Grade Three — Alternating Colors

Towards the end of 2nd grade and moving into 3rd grade, my students were writing so much that things just didn’t fit when we used the sky, earth and water set-up, so we switched to using two alternating colors to create lines.

I let go of the imagination to guide their letter formation (they didn’t need reminders about letters that dipped into the water or reached into the sky) and they didn’t really need the dotted center line anymore. So I chose two of the lightest colors (light green and yellow) and we alternated them down the page to create lines.

Also, throughout this year I introduced cursive. In about November, our weekly dictation was written on the board in cursive and they copied it into their main lesson books in cursive. I waited much longer before having them translate their own writing into cursive. I did not change the page set-up when we switched to cursive (they probably could have used it, but it just didn’t seem right to come up with a completely different set-up situation for cursive pages.) Instead, I made sure that we did cursive practice on primary paper with the dashed line.

I should also mention that it was March of our 3rd grade year when we closed for COVID. At that point, I provided cursive exercise packets, but completion of that work varied.

Oh, I should also say that throughout the crayon lines years, we used the papa bear side of our crayon to create borders on the pages.

Grade Four — A Wide Liner and One-Line Border

Now we’re in fourth grade and we set up each writing page with a one-line colored pencil border and we put a liner behind the page. I did a lot of experimenting with making liners that were bold enough for students to see through. Somehow finding a liner has always been the piece of our work that has me scrambling.

I much prefer to create it on the computer — usually a Google Doc — but getting the line to be bold enough has been the challenge. I finally figured out the solution, though. If “add a drawing” to your doc, you can make the line as bold as you want. Then you have a perfectly straight, bold line that you can just print (or online students can print themselves.)

If you want your own copy of my 4th grade liner Google Doc, click here and make a copy.

Borders

Though I know that many teachers encourage students to create beautiful, ornate borders, I prefer that my students keep it simple for writing pages. A colleague once mentioned that when you allow that free-for-all creativity in the borders, kids go a little over the top and it brings out astrality. I’ve certainly observed this as students’ borders get crazy-busy with flowers, rainbows, hearts and forest animals. Of course, I give them a chance to do this kind of free-drawing on occasion, but it is with a lot of intention, and not in their main lesson books.

I’m also a firm believer of the idea that freedom comes out of form. Students need to learn how to work within the form and completely understand it before they can overthrow it with their own inspired creativity. In large part, this defines the developmental path through this period, so I look for all kinds of ways to reinforce it. In my view, the middle grades are ALL about defining the form. Strong form and learning structures help students to relax into their learning and focus on strengthening the skills that will become the tools of their future learning.

This emphasis on form is sometimes difficult for free-thinking Waldorf parents to get on board with. I could write a whole separate post about this, but the Waldorf catch-phrase “Education TOWARDS freedom,” really sums it up. We’re not free yet, and these kids won’t be there until they have a fully-developed ego. Between now and then, they’ll have plenty of time to explore form and experiment with overthrowing it.

Drawings to Fill the Page

Figuring out what to do with blank space at the bottom of the page has been a work in progress for me. Because at this point most of the writing we’re putting in our main lesson books are independent compositions, students’ pages have varying amounts of white space at the end. My students’ handwriting is also significantly varied. I have some students who are still getting a grasp of cursive writing and their letters are quite large. Other students have joined the “teeny tiny writing club” that seems to be a pretty consistent trend in fourth grade. (I actually remember going through that phase myself!)

Whenever possible, I try to account for leftover space at the bottom of the page on my own composition, so students have a model of what to do with that extra space. It doesn’t always work out, though. There are plenty of times when my example goes to the bottom of the page, when a student’s work has all kinds of extra room.

I wish I could be fine with leaving the rest of the page blank, but pages with too much white space just look incomplete to my eye. So when this happens, I tell the students to fill the bottom half of the page with a drawing that aligns with the story. We’ve done enough of them that they know what I mean, but sometimes they get a little out of hand and that astral free-for-all creeps out. Often kids are not satisfied with their own work when this happens, which is a good learning experience for them. Eventually, they’ll know to keep it simple.

The other reason I tend to latch on to this solution is that invariably the students who have extra room at the bottom of the page are those kids who fly through their work. Of course I encourage them to slow down and give more care, but many of them do perfectly lovely work quite quickly. Having them do a drawing keeps them engaged while others finish.

Grade Five and beyond — Getting Creative

Towards the end of fifth grade, we start experimenting with other types of borders. This is still a step-by-step, strongly-led process, though. I want them to have an experience of what kinds of borders tend to work best, and we still have plenty of writing pages that use the good old one-line border.

Even in sixth grade, the most successful borders are when they’ve had a model to look at, so I try to do an example for every page through sixth grade. This doesn’t always happen, though. (By the way, last time around, I figured out a good solution for making sure I have a complete book of my own at the end of the block, even if I did some of the work on the chalkboard or was just too busy to make my own page. I had one of the early-finishers do my page while others finished their work. This ended up being quite an honor and they loved working in my book. I loved having work samples from a wide variety of students.)

In my view, sixth grade is the last of the super-strong form years (6th graders need a lot of structure, even though they seem ready for more freedom), and by seventh grade they’re ready for much more independence and creativity. Last time around, I remember observing this so clearly in the first block of seventh grade — The Renaissance. I can’t think of a better block to encourage creative, artistic thinking.

At this point, main lesson book entries can be a combination of writing and drawing. Students can see how drawings can enhance their writing and vice-versa. (Interestingly, even my fourth graders are asking if they can include a sentence on a drawing page so they can tell the story a little better.)

So, that’s the evolution of writing pages in my Waldorf classroom. I can imagine this becoming a series where I go through how drawing materials, writing processes and other classroom practices change through the years.

How do your writing page routines compare to mine? Is there something you do differently that is really working? I’d love to hear it! Respond in the comments!

The post How to Create a Waldorf Main Lesson Page appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

A couple of years ago I started planning my painting for the year by drawing little thumbnails in my planning book and it has made such a big difference! The visual arts are definitely not my strength and painting always felt like “one more thing” to plan during the week. I have colleagues who absolutely love painting and they have no trouble coming up with a fantastic watercolor project on the fly. I’m that way about music and grammar, but painting is so much harder. I’m grateful to have found this little planning hack, especially this year with my painting class on a Monday.

Clay Instead of Painting

But during those off weeks, I’m sometimes hard-pressed to find a good project. We’ve made window stars, beeswax modeling, done some free-form crafting and that’s always the perfect time for thank you cards, but until now, I hadn’t ever done clay with my students.

Years ago I came across Arthur Auer’s book on clay modeling called Learning About the World Through Modeling and I remember loving it. The very first clay modeling lesson I ever did was pulled from that book and it was really easy to turn to based on that memory.

Holistic Modeling

One of the things I remember former students struggling with when it came to modeling was that they wanted to pull bits of clay apart and reattach them. It works so much better, and students are so much happier with their result, if they start with a whole piece of clay and push, pull and move the clay around to create the form that they want. Eventually, towards the end of the project, you may have the need to add clay, but the basic form of the object should come from the whole.

So, for this first clay modeling lesson, I set out a few basic rules.

1. Do not pull off pieces of your clay. Use your fingers to push and pull the clay around.
2. The only tools you may use are your hands. Your desk is not a tool for this clay exercise.
3. If your clay begins to dry out, you may dip your fingers into the water, but don’t dip your clay into the water. (I heard a student say, “A little goes a long way!”)

With all of that outlined, we began our clay work.

One Hand Exercise

To begin, we took our handful-sized piece of clay (make sure you don’t give a piece that is too large for your students’ hands) and moved it around in our one hand. Once they had loosened up a bit, I told them to squeeze and then see what their “fist-print” looked like.

After that, they worked the clay, continuing with one hand and molded it into “the shape it wanted to become.” We shared some observations and then repeated the process with the other hand — sharing those observations as well.

We did all of this in silence. I told them that I wanted them to be able to listen to their clay and to “be alone” with it. My students always want to share their projects with their classmates. Their motivation is perfectly harmless — they want to share the experience. But the end result is often comparison. We work a lot on how to appreciate the work of others and appreciate our own work, but I just wanted their first clay experience to be individual.

Incidentally, this is another thing I think about a lot. I have a large class and there are so many times when I want my students to “be alone” with their work. You know that feeling when you are so immersed in your work that you don’t even notice the people around you? I really want for them to have that immersive experience at times, particularly when writing or doing artistic work.

But this experience is SO hard to create in a large, very social class. It takes discipline and it is something I talk about with them regularly. I’m happy to say that as hard as it is, we do accomplish it at times. Just this morning we had a composition assignment and the students were so occupied with the story they were writing you could have heard a pin drop!

The Sphere

Next, I freed them up to use both hands to create a sphere. My mentor in teacher training always emphasized that we should use the word “sphere” because a ball is something that is meant to be thrown. The last thing we want is for students to be throwing their clay around!

They worked and smoothed their clay until they were happy with their sphere.

The Egg

Next, they were to transform their sphere into an egg. I showed them how to put the sphere in the space between their thumb and first finger, wrap their fingers around and gently elongate one end to create the narrow end of the egg.

I wish I’d taken longer to enjoy this step in the process because as I walked around the room I was astonished at how different their eggs looked. If we’d had a shorter period, we could have stopped right there and admired each other’s eggs.

The Bird

But because we had more time, we continued the exercise to create birds. I showed the students how to pull the narrow end of the egg to create the head and beak of the bird. Then we pulled on the heavier end of the egg to create tail feathers.

With these basic instructions, I let the students continue working on their birds. They pulled a little beak, some used their fingers to create little eye indentations and others made the line where the wing touches the body. They were so cute.

As they worked, I heard them name their little birds and appreciate adorable little things about them. It made me glad that I had warned them that we were not going to keep these projects — they were going back into the clay bin. (But I actually really wish I’d bought clay specifically for the purpose so they could keep their little birds.)

The post A Clay Project in Waldorf Grade 3 appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Yeah. Mine too.

It’s enough to make a person a minimalist!

Okay, well, I won’t contribute to the madness too much. But if you’re looking to give a gift and want to avoid excess consumerism, I’ve found two things to be good go-to gifts.

1. Books
2. Art supplies.

A few years ago I put together a couple of gift guide posts to help with those decisions. You can check them out below. (Most of the links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I get a little bit of a kickback, at no cost to you.)

Waldorf Gift Guide — Art Supplies

Waldorf Gift Guide — Books

I’m all about giving purposeful, useful gifts, as well. Sometimes the holidays are a perfect time for a new lunchbox or a cute water bottle. And yes, your kids will appreciate them.

I’m home this week, preparing for a Thanksgiving holiday with the family, and getting caught up on some of my school administrative tasks. It seems like there just isn’t enough time for emails and record-keeping. If you ask me, it’s the perfect way to spend a couple of rainy days at home.

On the Friday before the break, my students and I had a great “finish-up” period. I put a list of tasks on the board and everyone got to work. There was a lot of productivity going on in that lesson!

In December we’ll be using these project/finish-up times to work on a calendar project. I discovered a really great book called The 13 Moons on Turtle’s Back by Joseph Bruchac and I’m using it as inspiration for our calendar project. The nature-based illustrations will make beautiful monthly drawings and we’ll fill in the calendar days with significant dates and events.

I hope you’re enjoying a quiet, reflective week like I am. Just perfect for this season of gratitude.

The post Waldorf Holiday Gift Guides appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

In this episode I interview a former colleague, Jenna Dalton. Jenna has a completely joyful and inspired approach to Waldorf music and sharing it with children. If you’re wondering about how to go about fostering a healthy, joyful and inspired relationship to music for your children, Jenna is a great resource.

If you’d like to learn more about Jenna and the work that she’s doing, you can reach out to her at her website Love, Music and Spirit. She offers consultation to parents and teachers who are looking for ways to bring music to their students. As you’ll hear on this podcast, she’s a delight to work with.

You can also find Jenna on her Facebook page.

The post A Waldorf Approach to Music, an interview with Jenna Dalton | Episode #32 appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I narrowed my kids’ wishlists down to

• Books

• Art Supplies

• Clothing/Winter Gear

I recently wrote a post about recommended Waldorf books through the grades, so check that one out if you’re looking for book suggestions.

This post is all about art supplies, and I’ve got quite a list to share with you.

The links below are Amazon Affiliate links, so please consider supporting my site by clicking through here to make your purchases.

Here’s the list.

Grade 1

• Watercolor paint
• A large 1 inch paintbrush
• Stick crayons
• Block crayons
• Modeling Beeswax
• Lyra colored pencils- large grip up to 5-10 colors
• Items for crafting lanterns, festival projects such as fun papers. stickers, felt, wooden doll bases, crown making supplies etc.

Grade 2

• Watercolor paint
• Stick crayons
• Block crayons
• Modeling Beeswax
• Tissue paper, construction paper, Kite paper.
• Lyra colored pencils- large grip up to 12 colors
• Items for crafting lanterns, festival projects such as fun papers. stickers, felt etc

Grade 3

• Watercolor paint
• Stick crayons
• Block crayons
• Modeling Beeswax
• Candle dipping beeswax (seek out a local resource)
• Clay
• Lyra colored pencils- large grip up to 24 colors, including skin colors
• Tissue paper, construction paper, Kite paper.
• Items for crafting lanterns, festival projects such as fun papers, popsicle sticks, straw stickers, felt etc
• Items for fiber crafting such as wool, yarn & felt
• Items for cooking projects such as food, and needed dishware/cookware

Grade 4

• Watercolor paint
• Small paint brushes for detail work
• Oil based, FILIA crayons
• A fountain pen
• Clay
• Lyra colored pencils- large grip up to 24 colors
• Extra-Large paper, Tissue paper, Construction paper, Kite paper.
• Art resource books with images and photographs

Grade 5

• Watercolor paint
• Small paint brushes for detail work
• Oil based, FILIA crayons
• A fountain pen
• Clay
• Plant based paint set- special set from mercurius
• Plant based crayon set
• Lyra colored pencils- large grip aim for 36 colors
• Extra-Large paper
• Art resource books with images and photographs

Grade 6

• Watercolor paint
• Small paint brushes for detail work
• Oil pastel
• Chalk pastel
• Charcoal
• A fountain pen
• Calligraphy pens
• Clay
• Oil based, FILIA crayons
• Regular oil based pencils
• Caran d’Ache Water-Soluble Pastels
• Colorless blender pencils & pens
• Watercolor blocks for veil painting
• Extra-Large paper
• Black paper
• Metal embossing kit
• Block printing kit
• Art resource books with images and photographs

Grade 7

• Watercolor paint
• Small paint brushes for detail work
• Watercolor pallet
• Watercolor pencils
• Regular oil based colored pencils
• Caran d’Ache Water-Soluble Pastels
• Colorless blender pencils & pens
• Charcoal
• Chalk Pastel
• Oil pastel
• A fountain pen
• Metal embossing kit
• Block printing kit
• Watercolor blocks for veil painting
• Extra-Large paper
• Black paper
• Art resource books with images and photographs

Grade 8

• Watercolor paint
• Small paint brushes for detail work
• Watercolor pallet
• Watercolor pencils
• Regular oil based colored pencils
• Caran d’Ache Water-Soluble Pastels
• Colorless blender pencils & pens
• Charcoal
• Chalk Pastel
• Oil pastel
• A fountain pen
• Metal embossing kit
• Block printing kit
• Spray Paint
• Watercolor blocks for veil painting
• Extra-Large paper
• Black paper
• Art resource books with images and photographs

The post Waldorf Gift Guide | Art Supplies appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

It’s the end of the school year and at the same time that I’m finishing up writing my reports, I’m also thinking about planning for next year.

(By the way, if you’re looking for some help getting those reports done, check out my 30 Days Till Summer Report Writing Guide. Many of you have supported the work I’m doing here on A Waldorf Journey by purchasing this guide and I’m getting all kinds of rave reviews!)

Order my 30 Days Till Summer Report Writing Guide.

While I definitely love sitting down and imagining the year ahead, planning out rhythms, researching curriculum and planning lessons, when the sun is shining and the days are long and hot, it is difficult to resist the temptation to head outside.

So, I’ve developed a few tips and tricks to keep that planning motivation going.

Set up the environment.

I’ve found that if I take the time to create the perfect conditions for planning, I’m much more willing to dive into the task. My suggestions?
Set aside time.

I’ve found that my planning is far more effective if I sit down with my calendar and plan out my planning. I generally dedicate one week to planning each block. I don’t always stick to the schedule, but even if I take a little more time with one block or another, I have pretty consistently been able to plan through February during the summer. After February the breaks come pretty fast and furious, so planning for the rest of the year as I go works out pretty well.
Consider where and when you are doing your planning.

My favorite time to do my planning work is in the morning. I can usually get a couple of good hours of work in before the rest of my family wakes up. With hours of productivity behind me I can usually feel pretty good about taking the rest of the day to do something active in the summer sun. If I wait to get started planning until the afternoon, I can be pretty certain I won’t get anything done unless I get out of the house. Those are the days when I love my little local coffeeshop.
Immerse yourself in the environment.

One of the reasons I love attending my annual teacher training is that it puts me in a productive, Waldorf teacher planning environment. With 30+ other teachers in attendance and everyone in a productive, planning frame of mind, I can’t help but get lots of planning done. Even if you aren’t attending one of these summer training sessions, there are other ways to benefit from the motivation and accountability that happens when a bunch of teachers get together. Find an online support group or get together in person with colleagues or fellow homeschooling friends to support each other.
Join A Waldorf Journey’s Teacher Tribe Facebook group.
Check out Plan It Out – an online group coaching program for Waldorf home-schoolers, hosted by Jean Miller of Waldorf-Inspired Learning.

Get the supplies you need.

I readily admit to being a complete sucker for stationery and school supplies. While my children groan when the back-to-school stuff hits the shelves at Target, I quietly celebrate. I just love shopping for this stuff!

I have a finely developed palette when it comes to school and art materials, though, and I have no hesitations about indulging myself when it comes to the supplies I will use to plan my year. For me, there’s nothing more motivating than a beautiful new notebook, a set of sharp colored pencils and a smooth-writing fountain pen. Here are some of my favorites.

Pens and Pencils

I just added this Kakuno Pilot fountain pen to my collection and I absolutely love it! It’s the most affordable, consistently smooth fountain pen that I’ve come across and it’s the first thing I reach for for any writing task.

I’ve always said that my favorite colored pencils are the Lyra Super Ferbys, and that is still completely true, but I’m finding good use for this inexpensive set of Tombow colored pencils that I purchased last summer to test out. Though I ended up settling on the Lyra Polycolors for my students, I like having this little set around. Because the pencils are thinner than the Super Ferbys, they’re easier to carry around when you want to travel light in the summer. I’ve got a set of 12 and I just wrap a rubber band around them and go.

Don’t buy the cheap imitation. Ticonderogas really are better. And they’re not that much more expensive anyway. Buy the big box. You’ll use them up.

Notebooks and Planners

Every year there are three different books I use.

• A big sketchbook for curriculum planning. I usually buy this before I head off to my summer training and I use it all year long when I’m planning out blocks. I’ve got one for each grade and it goes right into my curriculum box at the end of the school year.
• A smaller notebook where I write my daily lesson plans, to-do lists and student observations. This also serves as my catch-all bullet journal type notebook. Anytime I have to write something down it goes into this notebook.
• A teacher planner. This is where I map out the week every Sunday.

I’m really happy with this system and I’m especially pleased with the books I’m using to plan the 2017–18 school year!

This Semikolon linen cover blank writing book is one of my favorite things this year. I love the classic look of the cloth cover and the creamy, watermarked paper. The texture of the paper is welcoming to both fountain pen and colored pencil, which is difficult to find! I really like using a lot of colored pencil illustration as I plan in the summer. It just makes the process so much more enjoyable.

This Clairefontaine My Essential notebook is my absolute favorite thing of the year and I think it is going to make my school year so much more organized next year! Here’s what I love about it.
* It’s the perfect little A4 size so it fits in my small school bag. I’m making a big effort to not carry a huge backpack to and from school every day next year.
* The paper is sooo smooth! I’ve found Clairefontaine paper to be the absolute best. I will buy any notebook this company makes. Pro tip: The notebook company Rhodia also uses Clairefontaine paper. See my previous review of the Rhodiarama notebooks. (I love those when I’m looking for a hardcover, but for daily use I like this new My Essential book even more.)
* The pages are numbered and there is a blank index in the front. This means that I can write on pages as I come to them and then mark the contents in the index. This will make finding those random child observation notes, parent conversation summaries and curriculum brainstorms so much easier to find!
* They come in a variety of colors. I will probably use 2–3 of these over the course of the year and I love the idea of choosing the color based on the season.
* The lines on the pages are perfectly laid out to mark the date and title at the top, with written notes below. Just perfect for my daily lesson planning. This will also make it so easy to flip through and find notes.

For years, this is the teacher planner I used. This past year was the first year in a long time that I didn’t run out and purchase my At-A-Glance Teacher’s Planner. This year I started using the bullet journal system for organizing my life and I wanted to use something similar for my weekly planning for school. I purchased a Clairefontaine French Ruled notebook for that weekly planning. This book also included my gradebook and attendance records. I found, though, that it wasn’t as effective as I would have liked and at a certain point in the year I stopped putting my block plan into that book, and wrote it in my daily lesson plan notebook instead.

I’m still a bit on the fence about what I’m going to do for next year. I have another Clairefontaine french-ruled notebook ready to go, but I’m really committed to carrying a small bag, and that notebook is full-size. I may still use it and just keep it at school. I’ll let you know.

If you are looking to get a traditional teacher planner, the At-A-Glance is the way to go. The layout makes sense and there are tons of pages in the back for record-keeping and notes.

Resource Books

Of course, the resource books that you’ll use to plan your year will depend a lot on the grade that you’re teaching, but there are a couple of books that I use every year in my planning and can’t imagine doing without.

This is my trusty “big yellow book” and I consult it when planning blocks and before I begin teaching every block, just for a refresher. It’s definitely a must-have.

I just love Teaching Children to Care and I go back to it for a little refresher every August. It’s a very practical book that gets me in the right frame of mind to guide my students’ social interactions. Another must-have.

Assertive Discipline by Lee Canter is another super-practical book that can get you back into classroom management mode. Lots of great in-the-moment tips.

My copy of A Handbook for Steiner-Waldorf Class Teachers has gone missing (I’ll have to re-order) but my recollection of this resource is that it is full of ideas for review activities, record-keeping templates and other practical tools. Another great one to check out.

Alright, I hope these tips make your summer planning an enjoyable experience! If you’d like more suggestions for supplies and resources that can support your work, subscribe to my email list and get my Grade-by-Grade Art Supply list. The supplies on that list can support your planning just as much as they support your students’ work throughout the year.

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