Friday, July 25, 2008

Starting to Put the Pieces Together

As always summer seems to slip by so fast. We sneak off for vacation as soon as possible to get away and relax. We spend our time cleaning closets, organinzing things around the house, shopping, and enjoying our friends and family. But before we know it, school comes back around.

During the summer I spend a lot of timing planning what my classroom is going to look like academically and visually. Most of the academic stuff comes along with whatever changes are taking place within the county. Usually we have our pacing guide set prior to leaving for the summer but this year we couldn't even do that. Our county has adopted a new reading series, working on a new writing pacing guide, written new math standards, and reworked the science pacing guide along with changing primary standards. There will be some changes but hopefully we will still be able to be ourselves.

As far as our room goes, my hopes of transforming our room to the Australian Zoo took a dive. After weeks of searching on-line and in stores I have not been able to find what I wanted. What a disappointment! In light of the situation I have decided to do the Great Barrier Reef along with a fellow colleague. As you can imagine there is plenty out there about the ocean. My new direction is to help kids learn about this great ecological area. I hope to still teach them about the conservation efforts of the reef and the plants and animals that live there. I want them to understand about the environmental issues that surround the world's largest coral reef system. More important, I hope that each child walks away knowing that he/she can make a difference to conserve these precious environments. I really look forward to connecting this work to that of our Mem Fox author study.

It will be a great year!