"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" -Dr. Seuss

The end of my summer has come and I'm glad I could end it with a night at the Drive-In and a fresh Margarita! 

On Monday night, my hubby had a great idea to go to the Drive-In since we hadn't been to the movies in a long time. Better yet, we hadn't been to the Drive-In in a long time! For $25 you get to see two movies in the privacy of your own car and you kind of feel like you’re in the movie Grease! 

I spent my Tuesday food shopping and getting ready for the first week of school. I prepped my lunches and even made some morning Bombshell Spells to kick start my days!  

Then Tuesday night I grabbed a drink with some friends! So long summer, it's been real!

I know you're dying to know how school was! It was great to see returning staff and exciting to meet new staff. I also met my new co-teacher and I think we will make a great team!!! We got into our classroom and I should have taken a picture, I will have to do a before and after, even though we are no way close to the after! There are SO MANY BOXES but it will all come together, it always does!

More EXCITING news...

Officially got accepted to the Masters program at AIC!!! I'm very excited to start the next journey in my life/teaching career! Bring on the 2014-2015 school year!

Literacy Assessment Data Tracking

It's that time of the year where teachers are dying to get into their classrooms but have to go to meetings instead! At my school, returning staff  goes back on Wednesday and I just looked over the schedule for our 3 weeks of PD/curriculum planning/classroom prep!  Of course I'm anxious about organizing and preparing my classroom, every teacher is! We have moved schools and this is the third time I will have to create a classroom from scratch. BLANK CANVAS! Although it's overwhelming, I do LOVE organizing and making sure everything has a home! Over the past few days I've been trying to do some school prep at home. At the end of last year our team sat down and thought about what we would want to do differently during the beginning of the year to make the rest of the year flow better. 

For literacy we wanted to focus on assessments. 

We use Journey's Curriculum and although students do take weekly assessments on vocabulary, comprehension, and phonics, but we felt that students weren't as involved as we wanted them to be with understanding their score and what they could do to improve their skills in any of these areas. 

Our literacy center time is very independent. Students do not rotate through centers together, they get to choose what center they want to do and when they want to do it, scary huh? It works! It holds them accountable for time management, working independently, and being diligent. I think having students track their own learning and data from assessments will be beneficial to them too, they can stay motivated and take ownership of their learning. 

I searched and searched but couldn't find exactly what I wanted so of course...I MADE IT MYSELF!!!

Each week, after the students take their assessment, we will grade the assessment together and then students will track their data from the comprehension portion of the assessment. Each box underneath tells the lesson number, standard we are working on that week, and student friendly AIM. After we spiral back to an AIM, students will be able to see their progress for skills as well as progress for weekly test taking strategies. 

This is just a start and I'm sure we'll make some tweaks along the way but I hope we're headed in the right direction!