Why You Need Trello In Your Life!

Hey there! It's Alison from Learning At The Primary Pond, and today I want to share a tip that will make your life EASIER when it's back to school time!

During the last couple of months of school, I've been thinking about the things that I want to / need to do next school year. Many of them require me to take action at the beginning of the year.

I know that even though these ideas are fresh in my mind now (I'm writing this 2 days after our last day of school), I will likely forget most of them during the summer! To avoid this, I created a "Beginning of the School Year" list in my Trello account.

"What's Trello?" you ask? Well, it's an amazing (and FREE) app that you can use on your computer, on your tablet, or on your smartphone (Apple or Android). Simply create a free account, and then start making boards. Within a board, you can create lists and movable cards.

Here's an image of my "Beginning of the School Year" board on Trello:

As you can see, I have three lists:  "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done."  You can't actually see all of the items on my "To Do" list - you'd have to scroll down. As a reading specialist, I have lots of responsibilities at the beginning of the school year!

Each responsibility is listed on one of the moveable cards ("Get 1-2 teachers' schedules and grade division," for example). As I start working on these different responsibilities, I can move them to the "In Progress" list, and eventually to the "Done" list. Trello also allows me to share my lists with other people, so I can keep the other two reading specialists in the loop!

The wonderful thing is that I will never again have to make a new to-do list for the beginning of the school year! I will keep this board, and then at the beginning of next year, I'll move all the "Done" items back to "To Do," add or remove cards as needed, and voila! I'm set to go.

I bet there are things that you have to do at the beginning of every single school year, right? Wouldn't it be nice to keep track of them digitally, so you can't lose your list? And in an app that you can access at school or on your phone, wherever you are? You've gotta try out Trello, because it will make your life much easier!

To learn about how to use Trello in other ways to make your data tracking and anecdotal note taking easier, check out the video below.


Happy teaching!