Well, I'm officially in that back-to-school mindset. T minus 10 days until I'm back at school. Although I'd be lying if I didn't say I wish there were a few more weeks of summer, I am also excited about a brand new year. My school is amalgamating with another smaller school this year, so we had new classrooms built over the summer (not mine), new teachers hired, and many new students joining us. Lots of NEW for our brand NEW year.
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I've had a lot of questions about my schedule over the years, so I thought I'd post a peek here. This is just my bare bones schedule - doesn't show how my blocks are divided up, but I thought I'd share anyway. I'll be back next week (or maybe even this weekend) to explain how I segment my math and language blocks.
For the first time ever, I have my prep period first thing in the morning ... not sure how I'm going to like that yet. I'm worried I might slack on my planning, knowing I have the morning block to prep. I think my time is used much better when I use that prep period for marking ... which I'll be bringing home a lot more of. :(
We are on a "balanced school day" - that means we have three 100 minute blocks of instructional time, with two shorter nutrition breaks (lunch) and activity breaks (recess) breaking it up. I think some of the main reasons for going to the balanced day were to provide that longer, uninterrupted block of time for language arts (100 minutes required in primary, 90 minutes required in junior/intermediate - but I still do 100 minutes). Another reason is that with the older, 15 minute recesses, by the time the little ones got all dressed into their winter clothes, they were left with only about 5 minutes of recess. And then that undressing time came out of instructional time.
I am on a 5 day schedule, but I tend to look at it as a Monday-Friday schedule. So, even though I have "data folders (and portfolios)" scheduled at the end of day 5, it will be Friday afternoons that I do them. Our data folders contain a weekly reflection on learning (written by the students) and any work or notes that need to go home to the parents. I had a hard time squeezing it in last year (so it didn't always happen). Now that it's scheduled in, I'm hoping I can stick to it.
And that's about it. I have also had a lot of requests for my long range plans. I don't have any recent long range plans to share. A lot of our long and short range planning is done through collaboration with my other divisional teachers through our PLC meetings or other meetings.
Have a wonderful weekend!
