Hello! Firstly, let me apologise - this would have been more useful in January but we were very distracted getting ready for the FETC and TCEA conferences!

The purpose of this post is to give you an overview of key dates coming up this year to help you plan ahead. We'd love for you to be using Book Creator every day... 😄 but if you're not quite ready for that, here are some opportunities you might want to prepare for

BONUS  Download this year planner as a handy PDF file.

February

Black History Month

Any kind of project around Black History Month can be built in Book Creator. One idea might be to use the Mono or Antique theme books in Book Creator which include a pre-built timeline. If you need inspiration, check out our Black History Month example library.

Other opportunities to make books:

• Safer Internet Day (7th Feb)
• International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11 Feb)
• National Tell a Fairy Tale Day (26 Feb)

IDEAcon 2023

If you're in Illinois, come and join us at one of the Midwest's largest edtech conferences. 13-15 February in Schaumburg. Register here.

March

Be An Author Month

Last year was the inaugural Be An Author month - and it's something we're keen to establish each year from now on. There is so much going on in March that we decided to bundle it all together to help you and your students make the most of Book Creator throughout the month.

This year will feature:

• A reading resource pack to support Read Across America Day (2 March) and Read an E-Book Week (5-11 March)
• World Book Day - UK (2 March)
• Write Your Story Day (14 March)
• World Storytelling Day (20 March)
• World Poetry Day (21 March)
• Women's History Month

We'll be providing ideas and inspiration to cover all of this and more, stay tuned!

Spring CUE

We'll be at the Palm Springs Convention Center in California from 16-18 March. Come and celebrate community with us! Register here.

April

Poetry competition

April is National Poetry Month. We're hoping you'll take all the authoring skills you learned in Be An Author Month and join us in a global poetry competition! Be prepared with haikus, limericks, sonnets and acrostics and you and your classroom could win some amazing prizes!

National School Librarian Day (4 April)

If you're a teacher librarian, this one book will be your bible for using Book Creator with your teachers and students. This book will give you ideas for projects, techniques for collaborating and real-life examples of bringing authoring and literacy to life.

Here are a couple of gold ideas:

1. Convert your library into a "Book Tasting" cafe
2. Print your Book Creator books and see the reaction you get

Alongside this are Encourage A Young Writer Day (10 April) and Earth Day (22 April) which will give you plenty of opportunities for creating books together. You might get some inspiration from our 'Better Future' competition entries from 2021.

National Autism Awareness Month

We believe that students of all ages and abilities should be able to actively engage in the joy of learning. We've seen some beautifully creative examples of books made in special education classrooms, including these social skills books. I hope you'll be inspired to create books with your students, no matter what their learning styles are.

May

Teacher Appreciation Week (8-12 May)

Last year we made some book "cards" that you could use to say thank you to any of your teacher colleagues. Feel free to grab these. This year we plan to run a #ClearTheList campaign to give something back to the teaching community, and show our appreciation. This is where we choose some lucky teachers to pay off their resource wish list (be it on Amazon or some other list).

Keep an eye out on social media for how to take part.

Children's Book Week (1-7 May)

How could we ignore this one?! We'd love to help spark a love of reading in your learners. We have tonnes of books that you could start with at read.bookcreator.com. And we always say - if it doesn't exist yet, write it yourself!

Children's Book Week is happening twice this year - it's also in November.

National Creativity Day (30 May) and National Photography Month 📸 offer more chances to get creative. Why not use our Photobook template to get started, and check out this old iPad example from a professional photographer.

June

You made it to the end of the school year! Now you can lie down.

But if that's not the case where you are, or you're looking for some end of year projects to work on, don't forget to consider creating a Yearbook. We have an excellent guide (and template) to help you with this. So much cheaper than those online services!

June is also Audiobook Month 🎙. How about combining podcasts with book creation? We've got a great resource for that. Maybe it's a matter of going back over some of the books you've made that year and narrating them, recording your voice onto the page?

ISTELive conference

Once of the big highlights of the year for us is going to ISTE - the biggest edtech conference in the world. This year it takes place in Philadelphia from 25-28 June. This is always a wonderful festival of learning, networking and celebrating technology in education - we hope to see you there at our booth! Register here.

July

Monday, 17th July 2023. World Emoji Day. Need I say more?

WE LOVE EMOJIS IN THE CLASSROOM 😍

August

August is back to school time, and we traditionally pull out all the stops to make sure you are fully resourced. Check out our Back to School pack for 2022 if you don't believe me. We'll be updating it again this year.

It's all about getting to know your students, introducing them to each other and to you (and to Book Creator) and starting as you mean to go on.

9th August is also National Book Lovers Day so if you love books like we do, that should give you a reason to read or write a book!

September

By now you'll be ready to start creating books with your new class. What will you create?

One of the amazing ideas we've seen is where teachers have used Book Creator with their students to create books about transitioning between grades/schools. Check out this library of ideas.

Math Storytelling Day falls on 25th September. If you thought Book Creator was only for ELA or ELL - let me stop you right there! Storytelling absolutely works in the math classroom too. Here are some resources to help you and your fellow mathematics teachers.

September is also a big month for literacy, with National Read A Book Day (6th Sept) and International Literacy Day (8th Sept). If you're going to focus on literacy in September, I'd recommend using Book Creator for a Writer's Workshop. You might also find some useful ideas for younger students in this book: Book Creator - Ways to Enhance Literacy.

October

Starting the month with World Teachers' Day (5th Oct), why not have students write a book about their favorite teacher?

Digital Citizenship Week (16-20 Oct)

This annual celebration of digital citizenship happens in partnership with Common Sense Education. There will be a host of activities on offer for you to plug into, and we share our own resources and ideas each year on our website.

Other book-related themes include National Day on Writing (20 Oct), National Friends of Libraries Week (16-22 Oct) and of course the WHOLE MONTH is National Book Month, no less.

End of the month with some spooky stories 🎃

November

There's so much going on in November.

• National Authors’ Day (1 Nov)
• National Family Literacy Day (1 Nov)
• National STEM/STEAM Day (8 Nov)
• Diwali (12 Nov)
• I Love to Write Day (15 Nov)
• Picture Book Month 🌁

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving falls on different days depending on whether you're from Canada, Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands or some other country. In the US, Thanksgiving is on 23rd November this year.

We've put together a Thanksiving Activity Book that you can use in your classrooms as a bit of fun before the holiday begins.

GaETC & NYSCATE conferences

We'll be exhibiting at GaETC in Georgia and NYSCATE in New York in November. Come and say hi and pick up some lovely swag!

December

Computer Science Education Week

The month starts with CSEdWeek from 4-10 December. We have resources for you covering coding, curriculum and digital citizenship. Check out our blog post here.

Winter holidays

We have some great example books celebrating Christmas and other winter holidays in this Winter Holidays library. You could make books about your own culture's celebrations or investigate other seasonal traditions from around the world.

Ditch Summit

We recommend ending the year with the Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit by Matt Miller. This is a free online conference that brings together bright minds from the world of edtech to discuss technology, pedagogy and more. A great way to get in some PD at the end of the year, ready to do it all again in January!

Hopefully you've found this useful as you plot your way through this school year and the next. Don't forget you can download this as a bite-size PDF.

Is there anything you're particularly looking forward to? Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments below.