HA. I don't even want to delve into all the inaccuracies in that last sentence. Let's just say that as teachers (good teachers) we work hard ALL year long and earn the breaks we get. I'm not saying that I'm not blessed to have a full summer off with my kids to spend at the pool and the zoo, and I wish my husband were that lucky, but I do think that I earn that break. And it's rarely 3 FULL months!
It's usually around this point in the summer when teachers start having "teacher" moments, where we're constantly thinking about the up-coming school year and what we need to do to get ready for it. Just the other day at the pool one of my teacher friends was telling me about the nightmare she had that it was the first day of school and the new principal was already mad at her and she didn't have any of her work prepared.....yep, it's officially school season. Heralded by crazy school dreams and middle of the night panic attacks, back to school arrives well before the crazy school supply sales at Staples. (Which I'm totally excited for, PS.)
For me, I've been having these teacher fits all summer since I'm moving to a new grade and a new school. I'm trying to organize a reading and writing curriculum for myself so that I don't feel totally lost come September, and it's been fun, but stressful. There are too many ideas out on Pinterest and not enough time in the day, and I finally said to my husband, "Why do I spend all my time pinning new ideas when I just need to sit down and DO some of the ideas I have??!" (His sage advice? "I was wondering the same thing.")
So I sat down and started this Interactive Writer's Notebook. I have grand ideas to have notebooks like it for reading and math as well, and maybe even social studies, but those will have to wait. For now, I'm trying to focus on finishing up the Writer's Notebook. It's got neat little flip-tabs where notes about punctuation go, some fun charts that we're going to make and glue in, and a few places where we get to bridge the gap between subjects and analyze writing within our social studies content. My latest addition to my lessons (not necessarily to the notebook) are my Publishing and Peer Editing anchor charts. Take a peek:
Truthfully this is one place where I scoured the internet and couldn't find anything that I was happy with, so I created my own. They aren't gorgeous by any means, but I'm planning on creating them as large anchor charts with my class and these just served as a formatting guide for me anyway. Plus now I can throw away the ratty notebook paper that I scribbled all my notes down on.
I'm trying to set up Daily 5 in my classroom for the fall, and these anchor charts and the notebook go along with the writing mini-lessons I'm creating to teach. So far I have pretty much the whole year mapped out and I'm just going back in and actually designing the lessons and making the notebook entries so I have a sample book to teach from. I'll be sure to add more about it once I get it finished.
I'm especially nervous this year because I'm going back to middle school, where I haven't taught since I was a student teacher. It's common knowledge that most third graders are just pretty happy to be at school and have a teacher who smells nice and gives good hugs, but something tells me that the 6th graders are going to be a little more discerning. I'm trying to gear up some more behavior incentives and some start of the school year activities that they'll enjoy. And I guess the bright side is that if they don't like it.....there's always next year to get it right! (Good thing I'm a Cubs fan and am used to that mantra!)
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