Just a quick little share and link up with Jennifer of Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her Peek at My Week linky.
Every year at this time, I find myself in a place of despair. I question my worth as a teacher and bemoan all the things that I haven't been able to cram into their precious brains. This weekend, I started graded notebooks and essays, and quickly found myself hiding under the covers and eating chocolate chip cookies.
Somewhere around 2:30 p.m., I dragged myself out of my cocoon and started thinking how I was going to get through to their locked down brains. Today the sun came out and I got busy with my battle plans - in middle school, at 23 days and counting, their are no such things as lesson plans.
Their essays are a mess. My kiddos have the Perfect Paragraph down perfectly, but an argumentative essay? Well, they forget what they are arguing for and soon list all the reasons to not believe their essay. We are in the third week of total essays, and it appears that I took the training wheels off too soon. So after, reading and weeping over their essays, I came up with this organizer to help.
Our whole week will be about this organizer. We will take our sample one and deconstruct it. We will take their wholly unacceptable essays that they turned in on Friday, and deconstruct those in the attempt that they will understand. Then we use the organizer to rewrite said horrible essays. Hopefully, this will help. If it does, I will clean it up and put the whole six page "organizer" in my TPT store.
And, we might do some math, and a LOT of reading. Their lack of actual independent reading was the reason I made the chocolate chip cookies. Those who have been reading and doing their Quickwrites will be richly and repeatedly rewarded this week. Those who have not been reading, will have to watch those select few be richly and repeatedly rewarded this week. I am going to do my best to be positive!
Hopefully, this will help. At 23 days and counting (with 6 of those days being minimum days!), I feel like I am teaching a brick wall. There is still much to do!
Speaking of 23 days and counting, be sure to check out my last post for my fashion reflections:)
And now, I must go attack the backyard before I lose my dog in the depths of lawn! Don't forget to go over to Mrs. Laffin's Laughings to check out her cool new unit, Mythology Museum & More.
It looks like a great way to keep them busy and learning in the last few weeks!
I wish I had a dime for every time I took the training wheels off too soon! :) I could go on a really nice vacation. The important thing as that as good teachers, we recognize our boo-boo and fix it -- which you are...and the cookies help too!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out for my new product too! :)
Jennifer
Mrs. Laffin's Laughings
Hiding under the covers eating chocolate chip cookies....sounds like my kind of party!
ReplyDeleteI'm still giggling over your last post. I shared it with all of my teammates!
Alison
Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin'
Haha! Battle plans is totally hilarious and accurate! We have district testing this week and I just want go, seriously??? Do you know how hard it is for middle schoolers to focus right now for a regular school day let alone a district test?? Good luck with your remaining 23 days! :)
ReplyDelete~Heather
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