3 Things That Happened This Week….

• School started, for teachers, on Friday so I spent the entire day getting my classroom semi-organized. I really love the feeling of getting that done the first inservice day so I can begin digging into organizing my classroom activities and planning. Twitter is so wonderful, but I think it has put me on learner overload with SO MANY INCREDIBLE ideas to try this year, so needless to say, I need A LOT more time with the planning than the classroom setup! Here is a “before” with some “afters” of my room so far…
• Next Tuesday, I organized to have Max Ray do professional development with our K-5 teachers, so this past week I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Max on the phone about our vision for the PD day. Such a VERY caring and thoughtful presenter, absolutely cannot wait to meet him in person. (I am sure I will be blogging about it soon:)

• I spent the free time of my final summer days enjoying the last weekdays with early morning runs and lounging by the pool with the pooch.

2 Things on my To-Do List….hard to narrow down to just 2, but here goes….

• I MUST make myself sit and plan for my science classes! I am so naturally curious about mathematics and students thinking around it, that science has taken a backseat in my planning.  Not that they aren’t so many dimensions where the two subjects intersect/ overlap/are the same, but Ecosystems is my first unit of study and I am not finding that so easy to integrate into my first unit in Math, 3-D Geometry and Measurement. It will get done though!

• I need to finalize my first week activities for math. I have so many great ideas that I blogged about: https://mathmindsblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/first-days-of-school-planning-begins/ but I haven’t gotten it organized down to the actual day. I am really excited about trying out some new activities this year!

1 Thing I Am Looking Forward To This Week….

• As mentioned above, Max Ray is coming down for PD on Tuesday and I am SO excited. We are focusing on purposeful communication in the classroom. I am not only excited for my own learning, but also for that of my colleagues. Obviously, because of funding, not everyone has the opportunity to attend conferences such as NCTM or NCSM, so it is such a wonderful opportunity for the district to bring someone to us! What a way to show the teachers that the district administration cares about their learning as an educators.

Have a Great Week everyone,

Kristin