Catching My Breath

The school year is in full swing, and October was a particularly busy month at school. We have a couple of annual committments that we sign up for at the start of the year, and mine ended up both being in October. When I signed up for them I did not think about how it was also the same month as the end of the first quarter and the start of a block of time at our school called language development where we mix our 4th-7th graders into proficiency levels in either Spanish or English for 40 minutes. I also did not think about how I would still have so much to adjust and improve as I am implementing a workshop approach for the first time, as well as a new social studies curriculum. Needless to say, at the end of September I realized how I would need to gear up for a stressful month.

Now I am looking forward to a hopefully calmer November. I feel much more confident about my workshop approach and the set-up that I have created and adjusted throughout the first quarter. I have also made additional adaptions to accomodate the special education pull out schedule at different times throughout the day that will be a lot smoother than last quarter.

The TOSA at our school who will be meeting with small groups of students to provide additional reading support will be starting on Monday. I am very excited because this year she will be able to do a push-in model, rather than a pull-out. She was able to accomodate my schedule so that she will provide her support during reading workshop, so it will be a seamless integration. There will still be a little bit of time for me to check in with those students as well. In addition, that group will also be flexible so as we identify the need for adjustments in grouping throughout the year we will be able to make the changes. While it will not be as flexible as my groups because they will not change as frequently, it is nice to know that they are not set for the whole year. I am so excited for this new set-up and the collaboration that we will be able to do in order to better support our readers.

Although October was stressful, there was so much to celebrate with first quarter. I have noticed so many gains in my 7th graders that I had last year, as well as improvements in my 6th graders in just one quarter. Seeing student growth always reminds me of why I wanted to become a teacher.

There is a lot to look forward to in November. I am excited to move into this time of the year with more tranquility. Later I will post on the changes that I made in my workshop block for this quarter and how they are going. My goal area for improvement for this quarter is to improve with my conferring. I just received Carl Anderson's How's It Going? I have heard so much about this book/author when conferring comes up. I am also excited for a forethcoming book from Stenhouse called Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop, which is already available on line. I feel so lucky to have access to quality books that focus on conferring in both reading and writing.