The Rogers’ Pedagogical Planner: A New Kind of Teacher’s Planner

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management). 

The Rogers’ Pedagogical Planner is finally published and ready after two-and-a-half years of painstaking work and research. It is, quite simply, the product of my mission to create the world’s most useful teacher’s planner.

I’m going to be completely honest with you – the aim of this blog post is to advertise The Rogers’ Pedagogical Planner and to inform teachers about how it can be used to make life easier for us. However, I’m also going to try and throw in some useful lesson-planning tips in here too, and links to other blog posts about lesson-planning will be given throughout this article. 

Here’s a brief overview if you’re just looking for what the planner gives you, and where to buy it (but keep reading if you want some background and links to helpful articles and blog posts about planning and classroom management):

+ 45 weeks of double-page lesson planning templates for you to write all of your lesson plans on

+ A full A4 ‘notes’ page for every week of lesson planning

+ A full A4 ‘targets’ page for every week of lesson-planning

+ 45 pedagogical articles from this blog (richardjamesrogers.com) – one for each week of lessons

+ 578 pages

+ $22.99 and available globally on Amazon

Here are some extracts from the book, so you can see what the inside looks like:

Each week contains an article from my blog to provide insights into classroom management techniques, behavior management methods, active engagement strategies, tips for using technology in teaching and even advice on how to work with colleagues and parents:

 

Each week comes with a full A4 ‘Pedagogical Targets’ page which is designed to help you formulate goals for your own continuous development:

 

Two A4 pages of lesson-planning boxes/grids are provided for each week (45 weeks in total), giving you plenty of space to write your plans:

 

A full A4 ‘Notes’ page is provided for each week of planning: great for recording the details of meetings, incidents that have happened, events that are coming up, notes from training sessions, reflections, etc:

The planner is available as a beautiful A4 paperback from Amazon here ($22.99). However, for those of you who like to use stylus devices (e.g. the iPad Pro) or who want to print the planner yourself, I am selling the pdf version for only $15.00. E-mail me at info@richardjamesrogers.com to request your instant copy (payments are made via PayPal). 

My story (briefly)

I graduated from Bangor University (UK) with a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology in 2005, and followed that up with a PGCE in Secondary Science Education (also from Bangor) in 2006. I taught at UK State Schools for two years, before meeting my lovely wife, Nicki, after she finished her master’s degree in 2007. She is Thai, and had to fly back to Thailand as soon her her student visa ran out. I followed her to Thailand in the new academic year of 2008 and I have been teaching at international schools in Thailand (plus a brief one-year stint in China) ever-since. 

My books, and why I started writing

To be honest, I always found teaching to be enjoyable and fun, even when dealing with the ‘problematic’ students (e.g. those who required the active adoption of behavior management techniques to handle). However, my boyish energy and hyper-enthusiasm led me to make a number of silly mistakes over the years: little things, usually, that caught me off-guard when I wasn’t paying attention, such as:

• Not thinking about where students would sit at different points in the lesson.
• Setting too much homework, and not having the time (or effective strategies) to mark it quickly and properly.
• Not pacing my lessons to get all of the content finished on-time.
• Focusing too much on short-term positive reinforcement, and not considering the long-term effects that consistent praise can have on a child’s life (see my blog post about subtle reinforcement for more on this).
• How much I allowed myself to relax at staff-parties (often overlooked in teacher-training courses).
• The effects of physiology and biochemistry on my ability to function during the day (waking up early, having breakfast, exercising, etc.).

I knew that I had to learn from my mistakes, but I realized that I could only do that if I remembered my mistakes. I’ve always had problems with remembering things, so I decided to write my first book (The Quick Guide to Classroom Management) as a no-holds-barred record/journal of the blunders I had made (and seen others make) during my then 10-years of teaching experience. My goal was to simply have a record for my own reference in book-form.

I was surprised, and happy, when that book hit the bestsellers’ list for classroom management (number 1 spot) on Amazon on no less than three occasions.

Conclusion

I hope I have provided you with a good overview of what The Rogers’ Pedagogical Planner is, and why I think it is a great tool for educators everywhere. If you do happen to purchase the book, then THANK YOU (and enjoy!).

Skip to the end for links to lesson-planning blog posts I have written

 

Lesson-planning blog posts (great advice for teachers):

The Importance of Planning

The Top 7 Strategies for Efficient Lesson Planning

My Top Three Tips for Teachers

Can Progress be ‘Engineered’ from the Start?

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