How Do You Plan for Lessons?

As you know, I started teaching 15 years ago.  One of the first things I did was acquire a spiral bound lesson plan book.  I used the book to record every lesson that I taught: objectives, materials needed, songs that I would sing, and the process I would use during class.  Does this look familiar?

Have you used one of these?

Of course, I kept every book, so now after 15 years of teaching, I have a whole row on my bookshelf occupied by years of lesson planners!  I do refer back to them, so I hate to get rid of them.

Now to some degree, this is efficient, and I always know where to go to find old lessons that were successful.  The problem is that I can't always remember in what month I taught the lesson, let alone the year...so I am often flipping through several old lesson planners at a time to hunt down a tried and true lesson.

So, this summer, my goal was to find a way of developing computerized a lesson planner that I could easily search, allowing me to keep a record of what I  have taught.  I had originally intended to create a lovely database in excel, perhaps using a template from Teacher's Pay Teachers.  But, then, I came across a relatively new website called commoncurriculum.com.  

This free site allows you to keep an online lesson plan book in which you can create lesson and unit templates, write lesson plans or upload previously created lessons, search and input standards from all 50 states, share homework on a class website, collaborate with other teachers on lessons, and easily drag and drop lessons in a calendar format.  The website was created by a teacher, and they are currently working on some wonderful updates slated to arrive fall.

So, my question to you is: How do YOU plan for lessons?  Are you still using paper and pencil (by the way, there is nothing wrong with that!)?  Have you switched to computerized lesson planning?  Do you use excel, an online program, or something else?

I am going to try commoncurriculum.com this year, and I'll be sure to report back in on my progress!