Countdown to REAL teaching: 2 days!

Day Two is done, so that's good. One more day!

The above isn't totally true, though. I thought I'd let my kids play educational games, but I changed my mind. Yesterday I had a bunch of homework to hand back, and I gave each kid their portfolios to look at, and evaluate their progress. I don't think it really worked like I wanted to, but at least they got to see their work and their grades.

And then thinking about the various skills in which my students are lacking, and thus the skills I will get to return to or begin working on--reading, parts of speech, sentence structure, reading, spelling, vocabulary, READING, writing in paragraphs, writing full essays, and you guessed it, reading--I didn't want to give up the class periods with my lower level classes. So today we reviewed vocabulary and homophones. It's a start. We'll continue with that type of thing on Friday.

Though we're beginning a media literacy unit (apparently using the one I drafted last year! woo!), I am excited, though nervous, about doing some real catch-up, basics work. We WILL be doing solid reading periods where the students actually read for at least 15 minutes. I'm not going to stress about lessons, per se, for that. Maybe I'll do those fluffy note type lessons ("tag the text" "put a question mark next to something you don't understand" blah blah)(and okay, I've never done those, but they're quick and some say they can aid in comprehension, or at least aid in paying attention, which is the bigger worry). But I want the kids to read.

I'm even contemplating centers. For reals this time, yo. Though, more for writing than reading. Maybe. Perhaps.

One of the most exciting things about the bookroom (I say "one" because each thing is really exciting to me, cause I'm a dork) is the discovery of a three brand new boxes of audio books, and corresponding actual books. So we have multiples of a number of classic titles like The Giver, Holes, Bud, Not Buddy, etc. We also have one class set of The Westing Game, which I may not-so-stealithy conquer for my own classroom.

Tomorrow is our grade's Book Three, and some assembly, and I'm caught up with grading for now, so maybe I'll use my time tomorrow to further develop the media stuff, and figure out how exactly to tie in some civil rights stuff, and write up some 'plans' for reading stuff. Wish me luck!