Tag Archive for: school planners

Student planners designed to support teaching and learning

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Our student planners cover so much more than simply planning. They include valuable resources that support teaching and learning.

The aim of the planners is to be both informative and functional – they’re designed to stimulate interest and help students navigate their school year.

Primary Student Planners

Designed specifically for all primary pupils, our primary student planners include vital information to help students improve and grow.

The primary planner includes sections on understanding grammar, punctuation tips and ways to improve handwriting and speaking skills. As well as maths advice, there are conversion tables to help students understand length and distance, weight, volume and capacity, velocity, and temperature.

World religions, sign language, morse code, country flags and facts, are just some of the resources included. Handy maps of the UK and Ireland with a list of counties, maps of Europe and a world map are contained within the primary planner – plus a guide to the solar system.

A feature that includes maps of the human body is followed by a section with advice on mental wellbeing and how to deal with worries and challenges. First aid advice is provided by St John’s Ambulance.

Crucially, there’s advice to primary-age students on how to stay safe online.

Secondary Student Planners

This is our most popular secondary student planner. It contains stimulating content to promote and support learning throughout the academic year.

The planner opens with an informative feature on the United Nations Global Goals initiative, covering the important subject of climate action.

The resource sections include valuable reference pages covering maths, conversions, grammar, punctuation, planning an essay, physics, the periodic table, and maps.

As well as academic resources, there’s plenty of advice on the best approach to learning and revision, plus tips on memory and taking exams. Wellbeing advice covers issues such as healthy lifestyles, your growth mindset, and mental health.

My Digital Life looks at your digital footprint and how widely it can be seen by others. Common sense advice is combined with tips on security settings to help students interact sensibly online and protect themselves.

The Classic Planner contains the above information but is designed in a more traditional format. It has a clean and fresh appearance, retaining the full colour element of the Secondary Design Planner, but is more minimalist in design.

16+ Student Planners

The 16+ student planner is a little different as it aims to guide students through their academic options and into their life beyond school.

This planner includes key information from UCAS on the choices available to students aged 16+. This includes going to university, taking an apprenticeship, or embarking on a gap year. Information on the costs of higher education and living away from home will help students to make informed decisions.

The planner also includes useful advice on how to write a personal statement and create a CV, as well as how to present yourself in person.

Support teaching and learning with Boomerang Education student planners

Our student planners contain a wealth of content to support teaching and learning. We work to stimulate student interest and help to navigate them through their school year. We also assist in the meeting of Ofsted judgement criteria. Our student diary content is reviewed and refreshed each year to ensure it remains relevant and engaging for students.

If you’d like to know more about our planners, please get in touch on 01252 368 328

Or visit our website, where you can explore the diary content in digital format at https://boomeranged.co.uk/portfolio/secondary-design-school-planners/

Everything You Need To Know When Creating Your School Planner

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‘Homework Diary’ ‘Reading Diary’, ‘Secondary or Primary Planner’, the name differs depending on the school. In essence they all mean the same thing but my how they’ve changed over the years. Not simply just a week view diary, the school planner is now a carefully crafted weekly school navigator working in close alignment with the National Curriculum, UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service), stem4 (the Mental Health in Teenagers Charity) and St. John’s Ambulance. 

If you are tasked with organising your school’s planner this year, then make a cuppa, sit back and read everything you need to know about school planners, what to include and how to order. If you have any questions, as always, please do get in touch. We’re all working from home but still going full throttle.

10 Things To Think About When Organising Your School Planner

1] Choose A Core Function Of The Planner

The 3 core functions of the Primary School Planner are generally…

i) The Reading Diary – Key Stage 1 & 2 require national curriculum specific books to be read before the children can decide their own reading material. The reading diary is an important way of checking how quickly the students are progressing.

ii) The Spelling Lists – For the early stages when spelling tests feature every Monday afternoon.

iii) Parent, Teacher communication. 

Secondary students tend to use their planners as more of a diary, with a week to view and a space to set weekly goals and then keep them accountable by ticking them off at the end of the week.

The Parent Teacher communication is also a key component for this age group.

But it’s the extra pages that add the goodness. 

 

2] Teach Kids Ways To Get InformationTo Stick

Include an important section on Learning and Revision.  An abundance of scientific research means that we are well equipped to teach children of all ages how their brains can retain information. Having this knowledge gives all students a head start when prepping for exams. Understanding the simple ‘revisiting and reviewing’ formula can structure their revision accordingly. 

Here is the formula that we include in the Boomerang Revision Help pages:

>> Review your learning an hour or so after a lesson

>> Then review again, within a further 24 hours

>> Then again, a week later

>> Finally review again in a month or so

As well as the scientific proof that will help pop a child’s learning into a compartment in their brain, other useful tips will help. Teaching them how to write efficient notes, different recall methods and how to grasp the bigger picture in terms of where each piece of learning fits in, all give a solid and structured approach to revision and will see your students getting through exams a lot smoother than without.

3] Be Sure To Add Important Guidance On How Students Can Manage Their Digital Footprint

It’s so easy to get swept up in every new hot social media platform. Kids have moved from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok. Where their parents idolised pop stars and rock stars, kids now favour YouTubers with many kids venturing into having their very own YouTube channels. 

Include pages in the planner that will prompt a more cautious mindset when posting online. The knowledge and reminder that digital footprints stick around forever is crucial for kids when they might otherwise be so swept up in posting for ‘likes’ that they forget that their future boss will one day be taking a glimpse before deciding whether to take them on.

4] Open Up The World

Our Boomerang planners have a great section all based on ‘Your Future’. These are the pages that can make a ‘sliding doors’ difference to a student’s entire life. Providing the information that we already host on our Oodles site clearly maps out all the potential paths that secondary year school can lead to. Whether they want to continue with study, work or do a combination of both, this section of their school diary provides a helpful starting point. We cover GCSE’s, A Levels, T Levels, UCAS Tariff points and Technical/Vocational paths. We also include important milestones; every year of secondary school when they need to make certain decisions about their path. This section is one of the most valuable sections of the diary. 

Think about how you would like to incorporate this section into your own planners or simply choose a Boomerang secondary school planner and use our already crafted pages.

 

5] Give Your School Children’s Mental Health The Recognition It Deserves

Mental Health has thankfully become a ‘normal’ conversation. Helped along by sports personalities, the Royal family and important charities like stem4, ‘not feeling ok’ is now something that adults and children are encouraged to talk about. 

The inclusion of this important subject in your school’s planner provides a consistent reminder that it’s ok to feel anxious and it’s ok to feel low, along with some warning signs to look for and some tips to get through these feelings. We are proud to have worked with stem4, a charity that supports mental health in teenagers, for this brand new section of our planners and homework diaries. Please feel free to use our already designed pages.

6] Promote A Healthy Lifestyle

We can’t provide school planners and homework diaries to the children of today without giving important nudges towards a healthy lifestyle. Prompts to eat well, exercise regularly and get a good night’s sleep can do nothing but good. What would you like to include in your Healthy Lifestyle section? This is a section not to be left out.

 

8] Think Of Some Inspirational Quotes 

“I know the sky is not the limit because there are footprints on the Moon – and I made some of them!” Buzz Aldrin

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” Mahatma Ghandi

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” The Dalai Lama 

9] What To Include In The Diary Section Of Your Planner

In our Primary Planners we include Recommended Books at the bottom of every Reading Record page. We also include key competitions throughout the year that they may otherwise not hear about;  Song Academy Young Songwriter Competition, Space Foundation International Art Contest and Junior Bake off to name just a few.

We also include generally cool information and learning resources. Where they can learn how to code their own website or animation is amongst our favourites.

10] Primary Reference Section

The primary reference section is how you put all the information from the classroom wall into the pupil’s bag so they have everything to hand whenever beginning a piece of work at home. Fractions and conversions, triangles and quadrilaterals, Nouns and conjunctions. Give them all the tools they need so they can pull it from their bag when they get home.

How To Order Your School Planner 

You may be ready right now to order your planner, in which case give us a ring or send us a quick message and we’ll get right back to you. There is a minimum order of 40 planners so please bear this in mind. 

If you’d like to discuss some customisation options then please visit this page or send us a message. You may want a customised cover. Perhaps a cover designed by one of your students? An art competition works well here 🙂 You may want to include plastic pockets, tearable absence slips and traffic light cards. Have a chat with our Planner team and they can put everything in the right order for you. Happy Planning!

 

Exam preparation: Making the most of your school planner resources

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With so much riding on the outcome, exam time can be the most stressful parts of your school year and, there is often a high degree of pressure to perform well. However, the question that lingers on everyone’s mind during this period is “How do I prepare?”. To ace your exams, you need to perfect your exam preparation techniques, and although a huge part of the preparation process is revision, it’s also about learning to manage your time well. Stick around as we provide you with a few exam preparation tips and tell you just how you can make the most out of your school planners when it comes to managing that all important revision schedule.

Tip 1- Start early

No, it’s not all about getting ahead of the game, but it is about planning your time efficiently. After all, there’s nothing worse than realising you’ve left something too late!

Here at Boomerang Education, we provide you with your essential school planners that work perfectly when it comes to managing your revision. Creating an effective study plan will not only help you manage your time in the lead up to exams but will help to minimise any exam stress you may be feeling!

Try starting simple – mark your first exam in the yearly planner section of your planner. This allows you to visually see how long you must prepare for your first exam. And after all, the first exam is always the worst, isn’t it!

Once your exams have been marked, you can start planning your revision time and days. To do this, try using your week to view diary section of your planer. Here you can input what subject you’ll be working on and on what specific day. You can even plan the topics you wish to cover too.

Tip 2- Reference

Towards the back of your planner you will find ‘The reference section’. This section is there to give you a helping hand when it comes to elements you may wish to cover in your revision. This section of your planner will cover maths, punctuation, essay planning, the periodic table and other fundamentals you will want to cover before your exams start. Utilise this section of your planner as much as possible, and remember that your planner is travel size, meaning that there’s revision material with you wherever you may go!

Don’t forget to utilise the ‘revisions tip’s section of your planner too, especially if you’re looking for exam pointers – sometimes we all need reminding to check, check and double check our work.

Tip 3-Taking care of yourself

Sure, exam preparation is about preparing for the material that may come up in your exam. But, it’s also about you!

Don’t forget to take care of yourself during your exam period. It’s just as important to be in a good mental and physical condition for the exam- After all, stress can be detrimental to your overall exam performance and the last thing you want to do is sabotage all your efforts by ignoring your well-being!

After you’ve finished studying ensure that you take some time for yourself. Relax, read a book, go on a walk! Maintaining a healthy positive attitude during exam period is a key ingredient to your success.

If at any point you feel like exam period is becoming all too much, please do refer to our useful contacts section in your school planner. It’s okay to seek advice from a health, well-being and support group during such an important time.

We’re hoping that these tips are useful to you during your exam period and wish everyone the best of luck!

If you have any suggestions or ideas of things you’d like to have seen in your planner, send us a Tweet and help us help future exam goers!

If you’re a teacher looking for new student planners, contact a member of our team directly on 01252 368 328 or fill out this form – we’d be happy to discuss all options with you.

New Periodic Table Elements – School Planner Update

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Four new Periodic Table elements to be included: 

Content research for the Boomerang 2017-18 school planners is now well underway! This will result in the inclusion of 4 new Periodic Table elements.

IUPAC (International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry) has announced the names of the new periodic table elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. These elements do feature in our 2016-17 school planners, however we were only able to list them under their temporary names (Ununtrium, Ununpentium, Ununseptium and Ununoctium) last year.

The new names:

  • Nihonium – Element 113 – Nh
  • Moscovium – Element 115 – Mc
  • Tennessine – Element 117 – Ts
  • Oganesson – Element 118 – Og

new-periodic-table-elements-rsc

Royal Society of Chemistry’s Periodic Table – www.rsc.org/periodic-table

Why have these names been chosen?

The names for the new Periodic Table elements have been chosen in keeping with the tradition of naming newly-discovered elements after a place, geographical region or scientist.

Three of the elements have been named after the locations of scientists’ institutions: Tennessine (Tennessee), Nihonium (deriving from the Japanese word ‘Nihon’ meaning ‘Japan’) and Moscovium (Moscow).

The fourth element, Oganesson, has been named after Yuri Oganessian, a nuclear physics professor at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The four new elements, synthetically created in labs, complete the seventh row of the Periodic Table.

What next?

We will update the Periodic Table that currently features in the Back Pages section of Boomerang School Planners, to include the new names. This ensures that students (and teachers) can refer to our Periodic Table as a useful and accurate learning support tool, both in class and for help with homework.

We’re always striving to include the most up-to-date, relevant information in our homework diaries – if you want to inform us of any educational updates, please get in touch!

Tag Archive for: school planners