Clinical Skills Confidence: Planning By the Month

First Clinical Skills Confidence post of the school year! This time, I thought I’d blog about how I’m trying to make my life easier. You’ll want to keep reading, because you can grab my FREE template to try out for yourself! This year (and last year), I started to plan by the month instead of weekly. This does not mean I don’t tweak things as I go along or pull out other things during the week, but I have a general outline for the month and it’s cut back on the amount of planning I do at home.

This year, I even did a little more and planned out September, October, and November. I might try to do three months at a time from now on, but we’ll see. Here’s what my excel template looks like. Now, clearly you’ll have to alter it to meet the needs of your caseload, but it’s easy to cut and paste.

I don’t do a craft every week, but I like to plan at least 2 a month. It gives little hands something to do, which gives me time to work with other students. Plus, it provides easy decorations for my room and sometimes homework! Each month, I also use my crate system and slide in the materials for the whole month. This really has made my life MUCH easier. Again, I will change my mind and alter things as I go.

You can get my free excel template here (you can tweak it to meet your needs). Do you think you’ll try planning by the month? I’d love to hear your system, so comment below!