Slice and dice your planning however you want

Slice and dice your planning however you want with customizable layouts in Cc 4.0!

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:

How to customize a layout to make Cc fit any planning style

You can customize the Day and Week layout in 3 different ways:

1. Line up classes in nice straight horizontal lines
2. Collapse lessons down to just their lesson titles
3. Filter classes to see a single class or group of classes in isolation

Instead of “collapse lessons” the Month layout gives you a different layout option:

1. Display lessons in columns, which looks like the old year layout

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:

1. 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:

2. Do-I-need-to-move activities-or-copy-lessons mode

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!

3. 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.

4. 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.

Displaying your lessons in columns on the month layout makes it really easy to see which sections of a class need to spend extra time on a topic!

5. What-am-I-teaching-today mode

Day layout, classes not lined up, classes not filtered

When I go into school in the morning, it’s all about the day layout. I pull up Cc on my laptop and make sure that “line up classes” isn’t checked. That way I have everything I need to teach right there in front of me and in the correct order for the day ahead. Plus I can print off my lessons really quick if I want a hard copy in front of me that day:

Let us know what you think!

What do you think of Cc 4.0’s new customizable layouts? Have any cool ideas for how you might use them or requests for more customization options that you’d like us to add in the future? Send them our way at support@commoncurriculum.com, Facebook, or Twitter!