Only a few more days of summer....

So there are only a few more days until I start venturing back into the school building everyday. I start teacher meetings on Monday and then the kiddies start coming the following Monday ( Aug 31st)!!

I'm looking forward to it. I am very excited to be able to teach the new 5th graders as well as I think, fingers crossed, having the opportunity to teach both sections of 5th grade math instead of one section of 5th grade math and one section of 8th grade math. I know I'm silly for getting excited about that but it is exciting for me. I still have 5th and 6th grade SS too but those have gotten better each year so I'm looking forward to this year being awesome.

I have so much to do in my last few days of summer though. I need to organize my bedroom in our new house, I need to do a little bit of cleaning around the house, I need to stay on track for my training for my half marathon that is in less than two and a half weeks! Not to mention start thinking about setting up my classroom and what we're going to teach!

I always seem to have TONS of ideas and revelations during the course of the school year or right before the coming school year and when the year actually begins I am not sure how I'm doing. I tend to lose the ferocity and passion for my rules and consequences and end up doing a brush over on them instead of instilling them into my student's memories. That needs to change this year.

Also, I need to figure out how to actually organize my student's notebooks and notes so that they actually USE their notes and keep their notebooks in order. Math is tough for me because I always want to be so thorough that I run out of in class practice time. I need to be better about that. And in social studies i really want to have BCR's at the end of the classes to help concrete some of the learning. I never actually get around to making those though.

This year I hope i can figure out a good reward system too. I am kind of a stickler for almost never giving prizes or bonuses or rewards beyond stickers. I could definitely improve in that area. We'll see how that goes..... I just get overwhelmed with keeping track of each student, even though I generally only have a few!

So in long.... apparently I can say in short because I wrote too much already, I am both excited and anxious for the coming year. Very VERY excited that I don't have grad classes and hopeful that I will be able to use my time effectively so as to make the most of the free time I have because of my lack of grad classes.

That's it....


G