No Focus at all...

-
I think I have figured out my organizational issues, though they really still are a work in progress. I have the wikispaces set up for all my classes, so that's good. I actually gave up Planbookplus and switched to Chalk.com for my online planning. I gave up on OneNote, for now. I may do that at a later date, but right now I have enough to keep up. I love the Wikispaces and am working hard to keep that up to date - that is just a habit I need to cultivate. I also love Chalk.com. What I do with that is spend a little time on Sundays laying out my general plans for the week. I will put it in Chalk and then attach any files I plan on using. I also make notes in my written planner on what I plan on doing and then I check it off as I go through the day. Then on Thursdays or Fridays, I sit down and update Chalk with what I actually did. I figure this will give me an accurate accounting of what actually happens so I will have it for next year. I love this and it's working out well so far. I just have to be very, very disciplined and keep it up. I have a tendency to get tired and not follow through and I just can't let that happen this year. Where I am running into a problem is with AP Biology. I feel like I'm not focused. I feel like I'm all over the board with the evolution unit because I haven't taken the time to really map it out to my satisfaction. According to the curriculum map I made over the summer, we should be almost done with the evolution unit and we are not even close. I think what I need to do, is sketch out plans for the unit. Okay, this is stuff I never used to do but now it is all starting to make sense. I need the curriculum map to plan out the year; then the unit plans out that chunk of the curriculum map; then the lesson plan is the details. It is all coming clear now. Okay, I know what I need to do. I need to sketch out the unit plan so that I have a little more refined map of what I'm doing. I really need to do that for all my classes. Okay, off to look at the rest of the unit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going in too many directions????

-
Image
I'm having trouble organizing my lessons. There are a number of technology things that go with my lessons. I am trying to use Planbookplus to create my lesson plans: Which is great but has its limitations. So I thought I would keep all of my files in One Note so I could have access anywhere. That will be good but it is almost like creating lesson plans all over again. Then I have a class blog where things need to be uploaded and offered to the kids. As a result of trying all three of these things, I have completed nothing. All of them are half done and we have just completed the 2nd full week of school. I tried an external hard drive and thought that would be a good way to do it. It has proven to be more of a nightmare than a help. Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What to do???? How do I organize all the electronic information I have???? How do I keep track of things and not make myself crazy??????? So that is my struggle this weekend. I am going to complete one or tw...
Read more

And so it begins.........

-
Image
We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain; My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management l...
Read more

A stroke of genius?????

-
Image
The ongoing theme of this blog has been organization. I've been teaching for 9 years, but I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that works really, really well for me. Every single year, I struggle finding things I know I have or recreating the wheel because I've forgotten I have something. So I've been working really, really hard to get organized once and for all with a system that works for me. I know that I need to have things written/printed and at my fingertips in order to make good use of them. If I have to go online and look it up it won't happen. I've played around with binders and didn't really use them after I set them up. The last 2 years I did find great success with planners. I would divide the day up into my classes - 4 each day - and jot notes on what was to happen that day. That worked great!! As long as I planned ahead. Too many days I would get to school and the planner was blank. That left me scrambling to figure out what I'm t...
Read more