Hasn’t the year flown by? 2016 is just around the corner, so I am thinking about my class calendars for next year.

I teach a few different classes and the calendar for each class is slightly different. However, my class calendars often include national holidays and festivals from a variety of different countries, notable international days, and information for the students.

The calendars don’t take that long to make and they have become part of my class routine because the students are using the months and day regularly, practicing ordinal numbers and are being informed about important days and events.

The calendars can also provide you with a stepping stone for discussions by introducing festivals from around the world or for higher level students you could have a discussion about what happened on this day in history

Idea: Searching for dates in Wikipedia will give you a list of events, births and deaths that occurred on that day in history. Choose carefully and take into consideration the interests and sensibilities of your students.

Last year I made two types of calendars. One in PowerPoint and the other in Excel.

However, I have only made the PowerPoint version this year because it was the version that I used consistently throughout year.

Download the 2016 Calendar

Tip: If you are looking for Excel version of the 2016 calendar, try Microsoft’s page dedicated to templates and themes for Microsoft Office. There are some free calendar templates available in Excel and PowerPoint. This was where I got my first class calendar from, before I made my own.

The 2016 Calendar is just a basic template showing the dates.

Each month has a design to suit the season. However, if you don’t like this design, it is very easy to customize the calendar to suit your own style or class.

Customizing the template

Change the background by going to the design ribbon and choosing or a design or style from the drop down menu or by clicking on the format background icon on the right-hand side.

A window will appear on the right-hand side and you will see a list of options. You use a solid color for the background, a gradient fill, a picture or a pattern.

Tip: If you choose a solid fill or gradient fill, adjusting the transparency of the color can make it easier to read the calendar. To change the transparency move the sidebar marked (T) and lower the percentage.

Once you have selected your background you may want to add images to represent each month.

On the left-hand side of the slide there is space for two images. Click on the icon in the center of the box to insert an image or drag and drop an image into the box.

Tip: If you only want one image, delete one of the boxes and re-size/move the other one.

When you are happy with the overall design of your calendar, add your events and information to the calendar. Just click on a day and type.

The boxes marked “Write event here” will not appear during the presentation unless and event has been typed in.

I hope you’ll find this calendar for 2016 useful. Please leave a comment if you have any questions about it.

Alternatively you can send me a message on my Facebook page or on Twitter.

Thanks for reading and take care!

You may also like to read:

Here is a brief introduction to the Slide Master View and some further information about creating a Slide Master – This may be useful if you want to create your own calendars.

If you are looking for more calendar templates, Microsoft have a page dedicated to templates and theme for Microsoft Office and there are some free calendar templates available.

Here is the post that accompanied the calendars from 2015 if you want to have a quick read of it. Or visit the downloads page if you are interested in other templates from tekhnologic.