Miss Know It All

Photo Credit: Art.com/Google Images

Hello, Thursday - it's so good to see you! Even though, it's the summer - it's still my favorite day of the week for silly personal reasons, so let's celebrate with a blog post! 

This week, I have attended RtI training - for those in education, it's Response to Intervention - a framework to better reach at-risk students and provide targeted instruction that is not just a referral to special education. While it is an overwhelming task and the documentation can swallow you up, it's a necessary shift to better serve our students. A presenter today said we have to unpack child by child - we have to identify needs of all students - we can't settle for mediocre instruction and expect mind-blowing results. 

To go along with RtI training, our district has posted the first units for all subjects, along with the curriculum overview for the year, which has turned my OCD planning and organizational switch on for the year. My mind has already started prioritizing standards and goals and making a to-do list that will be constantly running from now till June 2015. Whoever said teachers get the summer off can bite their tongue in half. 

I have really been reflecting on my practice and my goals for next year - teachers naturally do that, but during the summer, we spend more intentional time looking at our previous year and remembering areas of struggle that we can prepare for. 

I spoke a couple weeks ago about accountability, and I plan on using this a platform for accountability to make myself better and hopefully, make others better too, because as a teacher, that's my ultimate life goal. 

This will probably be a running and updated goal list (with pictures eventually), but here we go: 

2014-2015 Goals

• Create individual data notebooks for each student: At a 5th grade level, my students can track their proficiency and set goals fairly easily. 
• Create interactive math notebooks: I want my students to learn to take notes in a real world setting - that's such a valuable skill. With math, I can teach color coding, diagrams, and how to chunk information. I'm using address labels to easily post math problems in their notebooks. I want to incorporate more foldables too - I used graphic organizers this year, but I want to make more! I'm obsessed with helping my kids organize their thoughts with organizers that can be duplicated by them on their own. 
• Create a classroom library check out system: As book worm, I have an extensive personal library that my babes can use all the time, but I want to hold them accountable for checking out books - I need to develop a system that will be easily managed as a classroom job. I've thought about an iPad app (Book Retriever) or the old fashioned card system (like an old-school library.)
• Research: I want to become better at staying up to date with everything! I know what you're thinking, Lucy, you can't know everything and you can't do everything, but this is my livelyhood - my passion, a significant portion of my self-identity, and I will damn near try to have the most resources and the most knowledge in my brain that I can! 

Here are my goals, take this time to ask yourself: what are your goals? Professionally and personally - do you have a plan? Is it written down? Does someone know about it? Are you accountable? A dream without a plan is a wish, make it an action. Last time I checked, the dream is free - the hustle is sold separately. 

This weekend, my action will start, I will spend my time by the pool and read articles about best practices for ELLs in mathematics, because my classroom will inevitably be more than half Hispanic/Latino. 

Make your action start today!