Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Getting Ready

As I am getting ready for the new school year, I am contemplating the changes for next year.  There are some very big changes!
  • Teaching only seventh grade, in block format, for English/language arts and reading. Because of this, I will have three groups of lovely students. I will be sharing my lesson plans with the teacher that has the fourth group of lovely students. I also very excited about this change. In my opinion, writing, grammar, spelling, speaking and listening should be taught in conjunction with novels, short stories, poems, articles and such. To me this makes sense.
  • Teaching to the Common Core expectations.  In comparing Alabama to the Common Core, there were not as many changes in the expectations of the students in mastery strands. I don't think this will be the biggest change, although I will be working more on teaching students how to track their own successes and areas that need a little bit more work. I think the level of rigor in reading will be stretching our kids a bit too. With this in mind, I have created a tool to help my kids. I plan on Lexile testing my kids monthly and having weekly workshop days for remediation/enrichment. With the block format, this should be easy to accomplish.
I am sure there will be other changes, and adjustments to plans,  as I move through the year. I am going to try post weekly during the rest of the summer and then maybe daily during the school year.  If the above chart will help you, please feel free to use it. :) 

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