Slice and dice your planning however you want with customizable layouts!
A sheet of paper is a lesson planning straightjacket. Once you write an idea down on paper, it’s stuck there, immobile, forever imprisoned on that one individual sheet. We believe that your plans shouldn’t be restricted. You should be able to move your lessons however you’d like on whatever planning calendar works best for you.
That’s why we’re super excited to introduce the customize layout button. It gives you the power to rearrange how your lessons show up on the day, week, month, or unit layouts, making Common Curriculum fit your planning style, like so:
Check out the different customize layout options in action!
How to customize a layout to make Cc fit any planning style
You can customize the Day and Week layout in 3 different ways:
Line up classes — changes whether you’re looking at your lessons in the order that you teach them or if they’re neatly lined up in horizontal rows(won’t necessarily be in the same order as your schedule).
Collapse lessons — collapses all your lessons down to their titles. Individual lessons can be expanded by clicking on them.
Filter classes — shows only the classes that you select. Multiple classes can be selected or if this option is off, all your classes show up.
Instead of"collapse lessons" the Month layout gives you a different layout option:
Display lessons in columns — switches from showing your lessons lined up in horizontal rows to being lined up in vertical columns i.e. turns the month layout into the old year layout.
Finally, the Unit Planner also gives you the“Filter Classes” option, so that you can drill down and compare specific unit timelines.
Five awesome ways to customize your layouts
Each of the new customize layout options in Cc 4.0 is great on its own, but they are truly powerful when combined, allowing you to get into different“modes” of lesson planning:
Sketch-out-the-big-picture mode
Month layout, classes lined up, filtered for groups of classes
Before I start planning for a specific week, I like to make sure I have the flow of my lessons across multiple classes and weeks mapped out first. For example, I want my Social Studies lessons on pre-colonial Native American communities to line up with my Reading lessons about the Mayflower:
The month layout is a great way to zoom out a bit and make sure your lessons titles line up between related subjects. Super useful for elementary teachers!
Week layout, lessons collapsed, classes lined up by schedule, filtered for one class or groups of similar classes
Once I'm done with the first draft of my weekly plans, I like to collapse my lessons and order them by schedule. I use this time to check whether each of my lessons is achievable in one class period. For example, if I’m worried that Monday’s lesson is too long, but one of its activities would work on Tuesday, I could copy and paste cards between those lessons!
This also makes it really easy to copy objectives and standards between lessons!
Multiple-sections-of-the-same-class mode
Week layout, lessons collapsed, classes lined up by schedule, filtered for one class or groups of similar classes
If you're a secondary teacher and you have multiple sections of the same class, you can also use the week view to copy and paste your lessons from one section to the other. Collapsing your lessons and then filtering down to two or three classes makes that process super fast:
Copying lessons like this sets me up to differentiate for particular classes that I think might need more time on certain topics.
Am-I-differentiating-enough mode
Month layout, classes lined up, lessons displayed as columns, filtered down to groups of classes
If you’re a secondary teacher with multiple periods of the same subject, you might want to switch to the month layout and check to see if you need to spend extra time on a topic in one of your classes or if you need to differentiate any of your lessons.
How to customize a layout to make Cc fit any planning style
Five awesome ways to customize your layouts
Sketch-out-the-big-picture mode
Do-I-need-to-move activities-or-copy-lessons mode
Multiple-sections-of-the-same-class mode
Am-I-differentiating-enough mode