Lesson Planning Made Easy with Google Sheets

Why I Switched to Google Sheets There are thousands of lesson plan books and digital lesson plan templates for teachers out there. I've tried several myself, including a paper planner (I spilled a bottle of water on that the first week of school one year), Planbook.com, and plan book templates I bought on Teachers Pay Teachers. All of them had their pros and cons, but none of them were ever quite the right fit for me. So, what did I do to find a planning solution that worked for me? I turned to Google Sheets. Now, I'm certainly not the first teacher to use Google Sheets for lesson plans; there are tutorials on YouTube that help teachers create lesson plans in Google Sheets, but I have created a Google Sheet plan book for myself and put my own spin on it. My spin is completely focused on simplicity and ease of use! So, today I'm sharing the benefits of using Google Sheets for lesson planning as well as three things I do to keep my lesson plans simple and easy to use, and the lesson plan template I made and use daily. Benefits of using Google Sheets to Make Lesson Plans for Teachers:

Easy Setup - To get started, you just need to be able to resize columns, label them by the days of the week, and wrap text. Space - You've got plenty of space to work with in Google Sheets. You can include as much or as little information in each cell as you'd like to.

Links - You can include links to websites and items you already have in your Google Drive that you plan to use in class.

Color Scheme - If you're someone who likes to color-code your plans, you can easily color-code cells by filling them using the paint bucket icon.

Reusability - You can copy and paste plans from one school year to a new spreadsheet for the next school year quickly and easily.

3 Things I Do To Keep Lesson Plans Simple and Easy to Use

I don't like visual clutter. Like, I really don't like it. There are so many cute templates and paper plan books out there, but I just don't care about having fifty customization options, twelve different boxes to fill in information for just one lesson, or clip art that will take away from valuable typing space. My main concern is creating easy-to-use plans for myself, and I'm very willing to sacrifice a cute design to make that happen. I just want to keep things simple.

1. I've frozen the row at the top that contains the days of the week, so the days are always visible as I scroll.

2. I don't have daily or weekly views, just one monthly view.

3. I use one tab per class. I wish I'd thought to do this sooner, because it was a huge game-changer for me. Having one tab dedicated to each class reduced lots of visual clutter and helped me save time finding what I needed each day. (If you're a SPED teacher who has 1-to-1 instruction time with individual students or small groups, you can also make one tab per student/group.)

Ready to Use Google Sheets to Make Your Lesson Plans?

You can make your own lesson plan template in Google Sheets, or, if you want to get straight to planning, you can save time by purchasing my template on TPT for $4. Click the photo below to grab my ready-to-use Google Sheets template on TPT and start planning faster today!

Whether you make your own lesson plan template or purchase mine, I hope using Google Sheets to make your lesson plans helps you streamline and simplify your planning! Looking for more ways to simplify your teacher life this back-to-school season? Check out my post Keep Your Syllabus & Back-to-School Parent Letter Simple! Until next time! Lauren