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Another Year Gone By

The year is over - and now it's time to review...

Although I think it was a successful year for myself, there are some things I won't be doing again and some things I need to do. For example, I won't be buying a house again... so I should haven't an insanity inducing obsession to distract me from grading. On the grading front, I'll definitely be keeping up with that next year, because the never ending piles just seemed to multiply like dust bunnies in the Palouse. Additionally, I think there were more than a few assignments that seemed to come out of no where, at least in student's eyes.

My first year, my expectations of what students should do was a little high... I nearly killed them the first semester. This year, I think my expectations were a little low (see above grading). I'm hoping that in the upcoming year, I can find a happier medium. I'd also like to do a little more advance planning and becoming more cohesive - it's still not a seamless as I would like it to be. Lastly, sentence diagramming is coming back. Although the students claimed to hate it, I was still explaining what an adverb is, does and where it should be in a sentence in May without using the diagramming. Combining vocabulary and sentence diagramming seemed to work really well. Last, (God, I have taught too much WASL... I can't even write a paragraph without those stupid basic transitions!) I need to be more proactive on calling parents. While entering grades, I realized that one of my students went from C- to F without a single call. Crap.

This summer I'll be teaching the summer school and the new modules OSPI released. It's very scripted and fairly intensive. I'm not sure how that will go over with students wanting some summer fun... or even, sitting in an English classroom for 4 hours straight, but I will be updating on the progress. I'm also taking a podcasting course next week and immediately heading for the AP institute afterwards. Not much of a break. Then again, last summer I was bored out of my mind two days after school got out and signed up for a bunch of courses any ways... I guess I don't do "summer lazy" very well. However, I will be trying very hard for the rest of the week.

Comments

The Science Goddess said…
Let me know how the whole module thing goes. We're doing 16 days of 2 hours (reading) and 2.5 hours (writing)...and 20 days of...wait for it 5 (!) hours of math.

I've got everyone hired and trained...but precious few kids have signed up for reading and writing---even after I called all of the families.
7:40 PM
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