Reflections

I can hardly believe that in just a few weeks I will already be at the end of the third quarter. This whole year I have been reflecting constantly about what is working and what I need to improve with language arts and social studies. Next year as our school grows I will only be teaching reading and writing because our third teacher that we will hire soon will be for social studies and science.

With that change my reflections have shifted a bit. I am still considering how I can improve in order to maximize student growth in social studies this year. For example, lately I have been scaffolding their abilities to write to learn. When I reflect I usually think about what is feasible for immediate implementation and what is a long term goal. Social studies still fills a lot of my short term thoughts, but my long term thoughts are language arts based with the exception of thinking how I will be able to at times do integrated units with the science/social studies teacher.

My main consideration for next year is deciding what my components will be knowing that the time configuration is going to be different. I am considering that I many need to alternate days having one day focus on reading, while the other focuses on writing even though I would want to have some aspects of both every day. That will give me plenty to mull over for quite a while, but I have a lot of ideas that I am excited about. I will be posting more details about certain aspects as I am able to integrate them (some later this spring and others next year).

A lot of my summer reflections/planning will be refining ideas that I tried this year. For example, I know that I want to improve with word study, my implementation of Anderson's ideas, my genre units, and my mini-lessons.