“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in in yet?” – L.M. Montgomery
This post is doubling as a “to-do” list for the upcoming school year. Students arrive for me on Tuesday, and I have a million tasks I still want to accomplish. If, by chance, I only manage four of them, then these are the non-negotiable items I feel I had better have accomplished by that first day.
1. Course pacing by unit
In years when I have a new set of course standards, this is a gargantuan task. This year is NOT one of those years. Following the tenets of backward design, I figure out which essential, or unit, questions need to be addressed within each course unit. I then approximate how much time to devote to each set. (Using standards-based grading, however, allows for retesting as the “big wheel keeps on burning” though.) This is a pretty rigid agenda which makes me a little uptight – and leads me to plan for snow days that haven’t happened yet (gee, that seems really strange when I see it in print). At best, I’m able to close units before extended breaks and teach concepts proportional to factors like relevance. This year’s plans reflect a couple shifts to devote extra time to the meaty topics of the 20th century at the expense of the 1500s. In addition, squeezing in “20 time” festivities is going to call for using Movenote to be a vocabulary presentation tool that my students will be responsibility for watching outside of class. There may be an occasional “flipped” lesson through this tool as well.
2. Skeletal daily plans for the first week
Defining objectives for each day and designing activities to accomplish these are the crucial ingredients here. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. At this point, I have a few of these objectives and activities ready. I still need to scour this resource http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=960736, Joy Kirr’s Live Binder on the first five days. At one time, I was taught that this should be an introduction to the topic as a whole – something like a “What is history?” inquiry. Over the years, I have navigated away from this because I want our opening lesson to establish routines more. In our opening sessions for new teachers (which I attended as a mentee this year), our principal – and “former” math teacher extraordinaire, Kim Niss – shared all the different routines that she built into those first days. Her philosophy is that these days need to provide “skill and drill” in expectations for group work, distributing papers, turning in work, correcting work, and other activities for which efficiency is clutch.
3. Technology tool plan
This one gets crazy. I cannot wait to implement a dozen different tools I’m not using for class yet. That’s not a hyperbole, and steep learning curves abound. I’m glad there are solutions to problems and new ways to extend our activities to students and their families. Besides Movenote, I want to use Remind101 this year. LiveBinder and Evernote are tools that I’m using for my professional work, and it will be a priority to introduce these to students as their needs dictate. I created a class Twitter account for communication and have tweeted a few “notes” there. At this point, I have yet to communicate the account name to my classes, but I could use our electronic gradebook communication to provide specifics about that, Remind101, and my website with our syllabus and other resources, at any time. Our ninth- and tenth-grade teachers became acquainted with our 1-to-1 devices today, so possibilities are breeding in my brain. Flinging eight tools at my students in the first three days might be overkill, but I know it’s realistic for them to grasp the basics of Google Apps in a short period of time once they have their tablets. My “plan” is basically a list of what we’ll use, how we’ll use it, distinguishing we tools from me tools, and when orientation on how the tools will work for our class will occur.
4. Classroom management gear
Hats off to teachers who know all 140 of their students by name and face on the first day of class. You are impressive! Mortals like me need a “Plan B” for this, so I will create a baseline seating plan for the short term. It enables me to get to know students much faster than if I didn’t. It also forces me to verbally interact with students more. Any time I have delayed this process, I find that I call on students I know – or clunk through random selection tasks. (“Okay, which one of you is Clarence?” as the crickets chirp and the students avoid eye contact like it’s their job.) Our Media Specialist is laminating schedule “posters” (8-1/2″ x 11″ papers) with each hour and a note about availability. In addition, defining areas of the room for late work, papers the students don’t receive, and other absence communication plans are major considerations.
Amid the anticipation chaos, which is heavier on the former than the latter, the reassuring part is that my clientele are forgiving if I don’t have it all figured out by first hour Tuesday. However, I put pressure on myself to deliver a model that communicates to them that I have spent all summer trying to figure out how to rectify the not-so-perfect aspects of previous years. It can be a revolving checklist, but each “fresh batch” is worth every step of improvement.