2022-2023 Free Printable Lesson Plan Book

My new school year starts next week, so that means it is time to put together this year’s free printable lesson plan book. In case you want to create one for yourself, I am sharing the files so you can print and customize your own lesson plan book for the 2022-2023 school year.

This free lesson plan book is designed for middle school or high school teachers who teach two or three different preps (or courses). Don’t need a lesson plan book? You could also print it and use it as a daily to-do list with sections for “Before School,” “Planning Period,” and “After School.”

I would have liked to have marked this task of creating my lesson plan book off my to-do list earlier in the summer, but I am always nervous that they are going to change up my teaching schedule without asking me.

So, I make it a point of never printing my lesson plan book until I get to look at the master teaching schedule which is usually only released a week or so before school starts.

This year, I will be teaching three periods of Pre-Calculus (including Trigonometry), two periods of Statistics, and one period of AP Calculus AB.

The AP Calculus course is a new addition for this school year. My school used to offer AP Calculus regularly, but it has not offered since the 2014-2015 school year. I’m excited to help bring it back this year.

Take A Look Inside My Lesson Plan Book

On the front of the lesson plan book, I added the school year, my name, and a list of the courses I will be teaching. In the past, I’ve added a mathematical picture to the cover, but I decided that the list of courses taught that year would be more practical going forward.

I keep my previous year’s lesson plan books in a magazine holder near my desk. I like to pull them out occasionally to see how I am doing pacing-wise compared to previous years.

The file I am sharing with you is editable, so you can customize your lesson plan book cover to include anything you want such as school name, school mascot, etc.

The first page of the lesson plan has a place to write five goals for the upcoming school year.

For my personal copy of the lesson plan book, I went ahead and marked all of the days that we will be out of school or have professional days. In retrospect, I could have probably chosen a lighter shade of gray.

The editable version shared below will not have any days pre-marked. But you are encouraged to edit the file as needed to match your school year.

I am teaching three different preps this year. Last year, I created a version of this lesson plan book that featured only two preps since I was only teaching Pre-Calculus and Statistics.

A kind blog reader (huge shout-out to Christy!) updated the dates for this two-prep version of the lesson plan book, so I have uploaded that version at the bottom of this post as well.

You will be able to use the Find and Replace Option in Microsoft Publisher to change the names of the preps to match what you are teaching this year.

Assembling the Lesson Plan Book

Once I got all the dates and class names changed in the lesson plan book file and the pages printed, it was time to break out the trusty binding machine.

I punched all of my pages first, then I added a colored binding cover to serve as the back of my lesson plan book.

Next, I added my newly printed lesson plan pages.

After adding all of the lesson plan pages to the binding machine, I finished off my project with a clear plastic cover. In the past, I have used the clear plastic cover for both the front and back of the lesson plan book.

I have to admit that the navy blue binding cover on the back makes my lesson plan book look a bit more professional.

2021-2022 Lesson Plan Book

Last weekend, I finished printing and binding my copy of my 2021-2022 edition of my free printable lesson plan book. The back-to-school season this year has been extra crazy.

That’s why it was three days into the school year before I had time to create my lesson plan book for the year. It’s also why I am so late sharing this year’s free printable lesson plan book template with you.

I designed the lesson plan book in Microsoft Publisher, printed it on regular copy paper, and bound it with a binding machine.

I also added a clear plastic cover to the front and back of the lesson plan book.

This year’s lesson plan book is essentially the same design as last year’s lesson plan book with one big exception – I’m only teaching TWO preps!!!

This is my tenth year in the classroom, and it’s my first time ever with less than three different preps. This year I am teaching four periods of pre-calculus and two periods of statistics each day.

I have pre-typed my two preps on the far left hand side of each spread of pages. In years past, I have used a purchased planner to write my lesson plans in, but I got tired of having to rewrite in the names of my preps each week.

My lesson plans aren’t anything super fancy. I write bullet points of what we covered each day in class. My principal does not require us to submit formal lesson plans, so this provides enough of a record for me to be able to look back on what we have done each day.

I also write notes to myself of extenuating circumstances that resulted in weird pacing such as fire drills, wifi outages, etc.

I tend to use my lesson plan book more as an artifact of what we have done each day in the year than as a forward planning tool. Don’t get me wrong. I am still planning ahead, but I tend to do that planning on a sheet of notebook paper, a post-it note, or on a google doc.

My lesson plan book is my actual record of what I ended up teaching every day during the school year. I like to be able to reference previous year’s lesson plans to see how many days I actually spent on a topic.

I have uploaded my editable file for this lesson plan book at the bottom of this post. If you have two preps, I recommend that you use the “Find and Replace” tool to change all of the places where it says Pre-Calculus and Statistics to match your two preps.

I have also uploaded an entirely blank version that has none of the preps filled in. This way you can print it and write in whatever you want.

Like last year, I added a 2021-2022 Goals page at the front of my lesson plan book. I’m currently 8 days into the school year, and I have yet to decide on my goals or write anything on the page. Maybe I will find time for that this week! I recently reflected on my 2020-2021 goals if you want to read about that.

If you are looking for a lesson plan book with three preps, I would recommend checking out last year’s lesson plan book and changing the dates on each page.

2020-2021 Lesson Plan Book

Today I want to share my free printable lesson plan book for math teachers. I got a ton of questions when I shared a sneak peek of my lesson plan book for this year. And I was even more shocked when several people asked if I could share the file I created.

Why was I shocked?

Confession time. I am not the greatest at lesson plans. Oh, I could crank out lesson plans when I was in college that would get me an A+ from my education professor.

He required us to write out scripts for each lesson and add a million other things. A good lesson plan was at least ten pages. The thicker the stack of pages we turned in, the better. We all know that’s not how lesson plans work in the real world.

Then, I started my first teaching job in a tiny rural town. We were told we had to turn in lesson plans, but we weren’t given a template, instructions, or expectations. I got behind one week and didn’t end up turning them in.

My principal didn’t say a word. He didn’t say anything when I didn’t turn them in the next week or the next week or the rest of the four years I worked for him. In fact, lesson plans were never really ever mentioned again.

Oh, I still technically lesson planned. I’d jot down plans on scraps of paper and never-ending to do lists. But, I didn’t have that one book or piece of software where I recorded what happened in my classroom each and every day.

So, this is why I was shocked. Nobody should be looking to me for lesson plan advice. It’s only been the past two plus years where I’ve actually kept up with a system where I make sure I write down what we do every single day for every single prep.

I’ve always thought I was alone in these struggles. I’ve tried the various online websites that promise to make lesson planning easy and painless. I always last about a week. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have to lesson plan on paper.

Before I jump into this year’s lesson plan book, let’s take a tiny peek at last year’s book.

Last year, I used a binding machine to bind the book together. It lived on my desk, and I would try to make sure and update it at the end of each day with what we completed in each class that day.

I will also write in notes of what went well, what didn’t go well, and any extenuating circumstances that caused plans to go awry that I will need to remember when I look back at my lesson plans in the future.

For example, I wrote myself a note that I was recovering from a stomach bug one Monday so I would know why I took things pretty easy that day and didn’t push my kids on to the next topic even though I probably should have.

If I haven’t taught a lesson yet, it often lives on a sticky note in my lesson plan book. I do this because I really want my lesson plan book to be a record of what went on each day in my class, not an idealistic plan of what should have went on.

We all know that those are two very different things. I guess I could write everything in pencil, but where’s the fun in that?

Last year, I used a bit of color-coding in my lesson plan book which you might have noticed. Each time I did a hands-on or interactive (possibly digital) activity, I highlighted it in yellow. This way, I could tell at a glance if I needed to up my game for the week.

Too many days in a row of just doing notes and delta math or my math lab practice resulted in a very boring looking lesson plan book and a very boring math class as well.

I used a blue highlighter to mark when we did assessments. This worked pretty well.

This year I haven’t done any color coding yet because I’m not entirely sure what I want to be tracking. I’ve had to trade in all my fun hands-on activities for digital activities. I can’t highlight digital stuff because then I would just be highlighting everything I write… I’m definitely open to suggestions if anyone has any!

The last quarter of my lesson plan book is very sad thanks to everything being disrupted by COVID. The distance learning my school implemented in the spring was very sparse, and we were not allowed to teach any new content.

Student grades were basically frozen (any new assignments could only help their grades), and as a result the number of students completing the distance learning work was quite depressing. We did department wide assignments which meant I had no lesson planning of my own to do.

My husband assured me that I would always remember why March, April, and May of 2020 were empty in my lesson plan book, but I went ahead and wrote “COVID” on the pages just be on the safe side. I am really hoping this worldwide pandemic thing is a distant memory soon.

For this year’s lesson plan book, I kept the same basic layout as last year. I did end up making a few tweaks though.

My first tweak was to give my lesson plan book a math-y cover. I also changed up the fonts/coloring a tiny bit. Century Gothic is my current fave font.

If you download my file to edit it for yourself, you’ll need to make sure you have Century Gothic and Fredoka One installed on your computer.

I had a bit of time this summer where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the layout because my three preps had turned into two. But they turned back into three preps a couple of weeks before school started, so that problem fixed itself.

Due to the fluid nature of things this year, I made a tough decision to not bind my lesson plan book with the binding machine. I loved having a book just dedicated to lesson planning that could live constantly on my desk.

This year I ended up punching the lesson plan book with my Staples Arc Punch and adding it to my disc bound planner.

I did this because I could have to quarantine at any point in this school year. If I have to quarantine, I will want/need my lesson plan book with me at home. I didn’t want to have to remember to bring it home with me every day just in case I have to unexpectedly quarantine.

I already take my disc bound planner to and from school each day, so adding it as a section in my planner means I will always have my lesson plan book with me.

I wanted to add a goal setting page for this school year. This left me with a random blank page that let me fit in a bit more beautiful math art!

I’ll share my five goals for this year in another post.

The actual lesson plan pages look very much the same as last year with only one slight difference.

We are having students work from home on their chromebooks on each Monday (except the first monday of each semester) for the entire school year. We’re referring to these as “Distance Learning Drill Days.”

We’re face-to-face with the majority of our population (some students have opted for a fully virtual schedule), so this allows us to eliminate one day of exposure each week. It also allows us to practice learning virtually in case we have to pivot to fully virtual instruction at any time.

If you look at the photo above, you’ll notice that Monday’s boxes are shaded in gray. I did this to signify that students are working from home so I didn’t have to write a note about that on every single week.

And, of course, I had to end with a bit more pretty math. If you’re looking for awesome math clipart, I highly recommend checking out ClipArt ETC. It is an AMAZING resource!

I ended up adding a printout of our bell schedule to my lesson plan book as well. It has already proved very useful when I had to unexpectedly work from home last week for a few days.

To get a better idea of how I use my lesson plan book, here’s a picture I snapped earlier this week. The lessons I have already taught were written in pen. The upcoming lessons are tentatively planned with post-it notes.

I added a giant paper clip so I could rapidly turn to the current week of lesson plans. This has proven very useful since I can’t leave the book open to my lesson plans all the time since I still need to reference other things like my calendar.

A side effect of needing to do all our assignments digitally this year is that I’m really struggling with keeping track of what I have and haven’t graded.

In the past, most of my grading was motivated by the trays of papers waiting to be tackled. Every week or so, I would go into delta math or my math lab and add the last week or so’s digital assignments to our online gradebook.

Now that everything is digital, I need a plan in place to keep track of what has and hasn’t been graded. That’s where my free printable grading list comes in!

If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you’re either a mathequalslove super fan or you’re looking for some free downloads. If it’s the former, thank you! You guys are the reason that I keep blogging.

I hope you enjoy! Hopefully you gleaned at least one helpful tip or trick from this post.

You will obviously need to edit this to fit you and your unique teaching situation. It’s currently set up for three preps. You can use find and replace to change the names of all the preps at once.

You’ll also want to change the name on the cover, obviously. I’ve also added a version that has the prep names removed so you could handwrite them in yourself or use it for something that isn’t even lesson plans. I could see labeling the sections as Before School, Planning Period, and After School and using it as a to do list book.

If you need more pages, you can duplicate the last lesson plan page to make the dates extend as far as you need them to. Of course, you’ll have to manually change the dates. Fonts Needed: Century Gothic, Fredoka One

Download Previous Versions of Printable Lesson Plan Books

2021-2022 Blank Lesson Plan Book (PDF) (1771 downloads )

2021-2022 Editable Lesson Plan Book (Publisher Files – ZIP) (1596 downloads )

Lesson Plan Book 2020-2021 (Editable Publisher File ZIP) (1575 downloads )

For the editable lesson plan book, you will need Microsoft Publisher. You will also need to download and install the free font Fredoka One.