Planning for Next School Year

With my first year of teaching behind me, I am always thinking about what I am going to do next year. I know that I still have a month and a half or so before pre-planning, but I still wanna get a jump start on planning. I don't want to spend evenings trapped at my teacher desk wishing that I could go home.

So I am going to "pay now, play later" as the saying goes. 

Here's a little look into what I am working on this summer.

After filling in the time frame (at the top), the standards , and making my learning targets (first column) I can focus on finding resources. When I find something that would help achieve a particular learning target, I will put it in one of the other columns depending what type of resource it is. Notice I do have TPT as one of my resource types. As a first year teacher, I LIVED off of TPT. I was told going through college that your first year teaching you will have to beg, borrow, and steal lessons. Although stealing is an extreme word for it, they really weren't kidding. I spent so much time and money on TPT this past year. At least I got a lot of TPT store credits for providing feedback, and I will have those resources for the years to come.

Why am I doing this?

First of all, it's important to establish goals. That's where the learning targets come in. Yes, the regular math teachers in the building have to come up with learning targets during common planning, and I could totally use theirs. However, as a math support teacher, I need to have my own learning goals that focus on the needs of my students. Creating goals is always step number one when you want to achieve something great.
Secondly, planning for three different grade levels is an insane task in itself. With this chart already filled in, I can simply go to the learning target that we are about to start and look at the resources that I have to teach that specific concept. I don't have to look in books, browse websites, etc to find what I'm looking for. I will already have the specific page number, url, etc right there in the chart. Then I can just come up with a warm up, opening, and closing.

Then the lesson is done!