Another Year in the Wraps

 Well...it was a year for learning. For me anyway. This was my first year to teach Title Math. I messed up by allowing it to be partly study skills as well. Next year, we will start the year with more structure and better expectations. I feel like the kids did learn though. Almost all of them saw good gains on their STAR test results. I like to think I helped them anyway.

Every year, I question lots of things I do and this year is no exception. The end of the year is when all teachers do lots of reflection and think about what they will change for the next year. I had everything packed up except my computer and a little bit of cleaning to do and managed to get all of that done in about an hour. Then, I spent the rest of the day planning for next year with the "new" math teacher, as in this was her first year as an Elgin fifth grade math/reading teacher. We are going rogue and are going to concentrate on teaching reading through novels which I am very excited about and really think is a good way to approach reading. I desperately want kids to enjoy reading and not dread it or see it as something they *have* to do. I have lots of work to do over the summer. I felt pretty good about reading when I left and a good idea of where I'm going with that. Math, I am still confused with. I am not sure exactly what we're doing in math, but it's going to involve a lot of home-grown material and we didn't make much progress despite talking about it for almost four hours. We're going to have a test every other week that will have vocab, current material, and spiral review as part of the test.   I'm not sure exactly what we're doing differently with the learning process, although I know she doesn't want to give too much work so that they have homework. However, I need them to have enough problems that they have internalized how to do it. I also feel that I am a pretty good math teacher and am comfortable with what and how I teach in math. We may just have different approaches in math. I would love to have us doing everything the same though. Time will tell. 

My picture that will stay on my phone the next two months to remind me how to reset my board in July.

One of the other pictures that I will use in July, so I can manage to get my computer hooked back up.