Timing

Why is it that at the end of the year I always find myself full of new ideas and excited to revamp everything I do in the classroom? Maybe it's because I am on the brink of having a lot more free time and that makes me excited to use that time for preparing, as I always do, for the best year ever.

I have some big plans for next year that I am excited about, so I know I'll be spending some time this summer figuring how some of the aspects of my day and my classroom that I want to change. I will still be sharing my classroom, but now that my roommate and I have a year of sharing under our belts, I think it will be easier to plan and figure out how we want to manage things next year. 

My district just adopted a new reading program to start next year (Journeys) and I am kind of excited to teach reading differently and use the themes from the reading program to better align our sporadic science instruction with other things are learning/reading about so that science fits better and is done with more frequency next year.

I also want to focus on the common core math standards and pull lessons from our program that fit each main strand rather than focusing on teaching the program according the pacing guide. I get so frustrated by how much the program jumps around ("spirals") and I feel like the kids will benefit more from focusing on particular standards in units. I divided the year into two month segments where I will focus on a particular strand/area at a time and now I just need to go through the curriculum and pull the lessons that apply to each strand and add in additional content to make sure math is fun and not too repetitive. 

My iPad grant team met all day today and we reviewed our data from this year and talked about what we want to keep the same and change for next year. I am really excited by what our data shows and excited to experience year 2 of our grant with a little more organization. I didn't blog about our iPads at all this year, so I'd like to do that more next year as well because what the kids can do is amazing. 

Do you feel tired out and spent at the end of the year or renewed and excited?

Exited for summer vacation maybe?