Lesson Planner

The Lesson Planner is the calendar and scheduling tool that helps teachers and Instructional Managers (e.g., principals, department heads) coordinate long-term curricular unitThe largest "building blocks" of a curriculum., medium-term instructional unitThe generic name for educational material type that can be a “building block” of a curricular unit or stand alone as a thematic unit. Instructional units can cover a specific unit of time or content., and daily lesson planA designed teaching approach to a specific portion (e.g., Understanding Quadratic Equations, Causes of WWII, etc.) of a complete curriculum. materials. Calendars display information in week view by default. In order to effectively use the lesson planner, it's important to understand the components that make up the main lesson planner home page.

• Calendar: The calendar portion displays the weekly view by default. Use the tabs on the top left (Day, Week, Month) to switch to an alternate view. Today’s date is outlined in dark blue. You can add notes, attachments, and quickly make changes to the during of materials that have been scheduled on your calendar. Simply drag the gray bars on either side of a calendar item to adjust the start and end dates of the material.

Point to a material that has been scheduled on your calendar to preview it. For resources that have been linked to scheduled parent materials (CU, IU, and LP) and external resources without links to scheduled materials, teachers can assign designated student-use materials directly from the preview window.

• Section bars: Each section assigned to a teacher is marked on the calendar by a color-coded horizontal bar. The Instructional Unit(s) and Lesson Plan(s) assigned to each section appear in the space underneath that section’s bar. The “Personal” bar is always first and is a space to enter your personal calendar items and events.
• Page Control: Select the tab to set the view preference. Choose Day, Week or Month. Week is selected by default along with the current week. Use the arrows to page forward and backward on the calendar. If your school district uses calendars for multiple years, click the year to select a different year.
• Calendar filters: Users may filter by section and calendar item type to limit the view to specific items
• Sidebar: Action panel provides one-click access to Lesson Planner to key tasks including Schedule Materials, Create Materials, Schedule Standards Coverage, Create an Event, Alerts, and PDF Materials.

To view the calendar

1. Go to Classroom > Lesson Planner.
2. You can modify the view by:
   • Day/Week/Month: Click a tab to view the calendar for a day, week, or month.
   • Material Type: The calendar items appear color coded on the planner. All are selected by default. Select the material type to include on the view including All Materials, Curricular Units, Instructional Units, Lesson Plans, and External Resources and click OK.
   • Select Calendars: The names of teacher’s classroom sections are listed across the top of the Planner. By default, the first time the Planner is accessed only Personal and one classroom section are selected. To show other sections, click the appropriate section name boxes.

To view standards performance

Click the Standards Performance icon  to view standards performance coverage for all scheduled materials. Results display for standards aligned to Curricular Units, Instructional Units, and Lesson Plans. Data represents an average of the three most recent benchmark or classroom assessments taken by students testing the applicable standard. Standards are sorted from the highest percent correct to the lowest percent correct.

Because multiple materials with several different standards may be scheduled to a single day, use the material names to toggle between views.

To perform sidebar tasks

The sidebar contains up to six collapsible panels that enable a wide range of calendar functionality. These include:

Icon

Function

Description

Schedule Materials

Schedule existing materials to the calendar. Locate materials from My Materials, School Bank, Available Curriculum, and Materials Banks.

Create Materials

Create new materials, then schedule them to the calendar.

Schedule Standards Coverage

Account for the standards that have been covered in lesson plans not scheduled in the Classroom module.

Create an Event

Adds events to the calendar such as field trips and interventions.

Alerts

Notifies the user of changes that have been made to the calendar by an administrator.

PDF Materials

Create printable PDFs of calendar materials.

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