Monday Musings

Today I noticed Ruth's Monday Musings, and pretty soon after Shelly had her post up as well. Here goes my musings for the day:

*Today I was complemented on my lesson preparation. I am still trying to balance feeling prepared with spending too much time in my classroom on the weekends. I always keep on thinking if I just spend one more extra day in the classroom I will be set up for the year on another area. While this is true it seems like another new area of need pops up to press me to wanting to spend another "just one more day". It always feels so good to get one more level of organization in place or to feel just a little bit more prepared on a unit. Eventually additional time in my current position and classroom should lead me toward the pay off when I will have many pieces established that I am still working out now.

*I am so grateful to have a grade level teaching partner this year. This is the first chance that I have ever been able to really work closely with a teaching team. It has been so nice, and I could not have asked for a better fit. Best of all we are able to laugh together a lot, whether it is to share celebrations or to work through our challenges with humor.

*Today I realized that I don't have to keep moving through a news writing genre study that I had started with my 6th and 7th graders. Instead I am going to take a couple of steps back to better establish the workshop model and what it should look and sound like. I am using ideas from Ruth's post to create classroom blog posts and classroom charts on the process. We will still continue along with the genre study, just at an altered time-line. Even though it is always hard to decide whether to pause and take a step back or to keep moving along, in this case I think it will be well worth it. In addition, I have my reflective notes written down so that next year I will remember to add in this pieces in my yearly outline and have a smoother start to begin with. My students also started to work on their heart mapping today. I had wanted to do this for a long time but somehow forgot. Last week I ran across the idea and emailed myself a reminder to add it into my agenda. However, I will be using it to inspire any type of writing, rather than just poetry (as in Heard's book).

*Yesterday while at school I remembered to check out Nancie Atwell's video. What a special treat! She has always been so inspiring. Today I was reflecting on how much I try to fit into my day. Every piece is "essential", closely aligned with my philosophy of best practice, but I may need to incorporate some pieces on alternating days because there is not quite enough time in the day to incorporate it all.

*I loved my first TCI lesson in social studies. We started out with a geography challenge, which was a perfect follow-up to our start of the year geography intro on a world-wide scale. Now students are zeroing in on the specific geographic area that we will be studying. It was fun to see the level of interaction that the program incorporates. I can't wait to teach more of the lessons, but know that it will require more planning on Spanish weeks since not all of the materials are available in both languages. It will be one of my favorite parts of English weeks though.

*I am still trying to balance out the best way to have my environmental print fully reflect the language of the week, while also being time efficient. That is enough to be its full own post though.