I'm in the home stretch now! Less than three more weeks of waking up with an alarm clock (instead of waking to my daughter's footprints, which happens three or four days a week anyway). Less than three weeks of rushing to pack two lunches (oh how I wish daycare provided lunch). Less than three weeks of driving to work wondering what creative inspiration will strike halfway through a well-planned lesson.
This week I'm administering a speaking test to every student. It's a stressful assessment for many of them, even though we spent a lot of time practicing during the year and did several preparation activities innthenpast few weeks. I spend a good deal of time smiling and nodding and trying not to look disappointed when a student obviously didn't study. I budget five minutes per student, six students per period, and set aside the entire week. It usually takes far less time, as many students answer quickly and it's really only the students who were in danger of failing that need more than five minutes for the task. While I'm working individually with students,mthe remainder of the class is working in review materials. I'm always fascinated how elementary school teachers can adeptly conference with individual students and the rest of the class functions without direct supervision, yet these kinds of activities are hot beds for behavior problems come middle school! My colleague and I developed three study packets that incorporate drill, vocabulary review,mreading practice, and a writing assessment. At the end of each class, I'm collecting the writing and grading it. It's taking just over an hour to grade the last two nights, rather quick for me because I'm not making individual corrections on each paper but rather just completing the grading rubric. If students want help fixing their nite or wonder what they did wrong, I'm available after school today, during lunch every other day, and before school on Friday. This isn't the time of year for me to stress everything to all students; it's the time of year to get everything finished that needs to be finished.
1. I need to develop a system to contain all of my manipulatives. Over the years I've created a bunch of hands-on activities, often seven sets of each (one for each student group). Everything is nicely stored in sandwich baggies and this year I made an effort to color-code each set in case pieces come loose during class. But now I have to store everything so it's easy to find next year. After 22 years, I shouldn't still be cutting and pasting every day in preparation for another activity. I bought a six-drawer stacky thing (Sterlite organizer?) yesterday at Staples. We have six big units during the year, I'll devote one drawer to each. For the remainder of this week, I'm going to spend extra minute throwing baggies of laminated strips of paper into one of these six drawers. Hopefully I'll have everything sorted by Friday. If not, if the system doesn't work for me immediately, the unit goes back to Staples. (It was $34 and I had a 20% off coupon. I also got some binder clips with the intention of clipping the sets together within the drawer, but that's not a priority this week. And I got pretty labels for the front of the drawers, which will not be opened until I decide I'm keeping the unit.)
2. My bulletin boards are just about empty. I returned all student work so I could hang up the speaking review questions, but those came down for the test this week. I could develop a bulletin board set on improving writing for that part of the final, but I don't have time for that so my boards sit empty. Well, the green paper I put up in 2002 when I moved into this room is still there. (No, not an exaggeration. I changed the borders in around 2008.). After the final exam, I'll put up the beginning year bulletin board sets so I don't have to do it in August/September. I got that trick from a colleague a few years ago. I love coming in after the summer (I spend the last week of summer in my classroom) and seeing a room that looks ready to go. If I develop something new or decide I don't like it, I can always change it. But it's a great feeling knowing my room is ready on the first day a parent walks in to introduce themselves. Makes a great impression, too. Parents think you've been setting up all summer; administrators think you've been planning all summer.
3. I've always had a problem with the paper trail. I'm a hoarder, I keep everything. I have NO IDEA why I keep printed copies of handouts available on my textbook website AND printed in the ancillary materials. And I keep printed copies of handouts I created and saved on my computer. And I often save the handouts every year, just save them again to the current year's files. If the drawer thing works, I'm going through my binders and throwing out everything I have a digital copy of. My goal is to clear off an entire book case and get rid of a small filing cabinet.
When do you startbplanningnfor next year? Do you set up now? Come in over the summer?mworknaround the kid's?
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