How to Choose the Best Lesson Planner for Students

It is often said that we cannot manage what we cannot measure. This can be rightfully said especially for students since they are always managing too many activities at once, beginning from academic commitments, to extracurricular participation inside and outside school. However, their main motive is usually creating a schedule for their productivity levels to try and improve it. Another common reason is having the motivation to meet deadlines, with an effective planner it is possible to keep a track of how many things we have to do in a day and easily start meeting our goals 1 by 1.

Whatever the reason might be, undeniably, a lesson planner occupies an irreplaceable part in the budget, faculty and administration of an educational institution.

What is a lesson planner?

A schedule planner, online or offline, is a tool that helps students organise multiple activities and often set reminders to finish work ahead of time. Similarly, teachers use a lesson planner to coordinate everyday classes and mix and match activities for greater productivity levels among students.

Not every school relies on such advanced software since they already have inbuilt systems and benefits. A learning management system. Here is why investing in one could be advantageous to your institution;

• Coordinates class activities, assignment sheets, upcoming examination dates, etc on one page allowing both students and teachers to edit it.
• Adds to the confidence level of students and boosts them beforehand for the day that lies ahead by informing them through notifications about important events regularly.
• Helps streamline multiple activities and guides substitute teachers in times of need.
• Reduces the manual workload required to make decisions based on inputs from teachers in real-time. They can simply update availability, class requirements and class performance for a schedule to be made accordingly.

Features of the Best Lesson Planner

Realistic schedule

A Lesson plan that is jam-packed with several activities is not always the best thing to do for your students. Similarly, an overwhelming amount of notifications, alert messages or feedback can also reduce the confidence levels of students instead of boosting it by making them constantly self-aware. This function should be useful, and not overwhelming, hence we can call it realistic or rationally modelled to fit the life of a school student.

Institutions should be extra careful when picking lesson plans because that defines the activities of each child they would be undertaking to progress. The intensity of each plan, and the personal focus of the teaching staff to contributes to a Child’s educational nourishment.

Real-time updates

Students must be informed about schedule changes as soon as possible considering they would have to submit such assignments or attend classes shortly. A real-time update is a feature we cannot miss because these notifications will inform students when to join a class, and indulge in other activities.

Syncing

A planner should be In Sync with resource pages, news, notices and event pages, and with the personal schedules of related teachers to automatically keep recording, storing or replacing data on a cloud-based learning management system. Students can conveniently access learning resources from the schedule itself when it is In Sync or linked directly. Often, this easy access is life-saving for last-minute revisions.

Create a timeline

Following a lesson might be a day-to-day thing regularly, but when students do it for a long time, it contributes to their learning timeline. This timeline is a total of everything they have done, achieved a planned to achieve through the years. it might highlight some important parts of their life such as graduation days, sports days, etc.

What’s important here is to remind every student that learning is a journey that requires dedication, not temporarily, but for quite a long time in their growth stages. And only through proper planning would they be able to measure and achieve their goals.

Encourage student involvement

Apart from the basic structure of classes and activities, the best lesson planner must encourage students to participate in mentioned activities. Teacher prompts, open-ended questions, friendly reminders, communicative language, and many techniques are used by the school administration to promote student participation.

Although these are the basic features you should keep in mind when choosing a planner, remember to consult your students and gain their views on which features they would personally like to use. Keep your lessons organised, and allow your teachers to finally relax with the lesson sheet taken care of!