Waking up

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The first week of break is almost over and, as I had planned, I spent most of the week not thinking about school. After my last post, I just kind of walked away and didn't give it another thought until yesterday. Then I started thinking about what to do next. It's kind of like waking from a nap and not knowing exactly what day or year it is. Yeah, that's how I felt. I believe I even said more than once, what day is it? So, now I'm apparently fully awake and back in the game. Once I put my mind to it, it really wasn't that hard to start to move forward. I got about 2 weeks of AP Biology done and that is huge. I have an idea of what I want to accomplish, but I'm not sure of the best way to get there. So this post is going to be a bit of a brain dump to try and sort some things out.

The first thing up for consideration is literacy. I plan on tackling that this semester and making it so it's part of my regular curriculum in all my classes. That means that there will be some overlap. I will start it this semester and then restart it next year. So those that take more than one class from me will have it again but I think that will be a good thing. These kids have no idea how to read a book or something beyond their understanding and I plan on teaching them. Towards that end, I want to use science literacy as bellwork instead of just questions or problems. I purchased a program off TeachersPayTeachers about teaching science literacy, I just need to read through it and develop a strategy for teaching it. I need to figure out how many "steps" there are and how long to work on each 'step'. I also need to develop some homework using these methods since to me, this is almost more important than content. So I think I need to get a calendar and start working these things out. Okay, that's how I'll approach it. Plan it out based on the calendar and then go back and fill in the details. I like that.

 Next is class time. I wasted a lot of class time last semester and I freely admit that. I was not in a space to battle them over classwork and homework and getting things done and all that nonsense. But I am now. I'm taking a hardline this semester and I'm going to stick to it. So I need to start overplanning my classes. I would prefer to not have enough time than to have tons of free time left over. To do that though, I need to work on transitions. I can't just switch from one thing to another, it's too hard on them that way. So I need to figure out each class how the flow will work. I'd like to be something like lecture, activity, practice. Something like that. Doing the literacy as bellwork will take up time, so that will help keep things moving too. I would also like to develop a schedule of some sort. Like Day 1 is lecture, Day 2 is activity, Day 3 is a lab, etc. But that doesn't always work out. Maybe I could just make every other Wednesday as lab day? That might work. If I have designated days as lab days, that would lighten the load on me and I wouldn't have to rush to set labs up. Oh, that may be genius. Also, maybe I could spend more time on literacy on say Mondays and more time on activities on Wednesdays. Oh, I think I may be on to something here. I also think that if different days are designated as different things, it will reduce my decision fatigue because I will know exactly what to do on those days. OMG, I really may have hit on something here. Which will solve all the other issues I have. Okay, I like this a whole lot. I could use the basic outline for all my classes, just differ the content. And I could make sure that labs for 3 different classes don't fall on the same day. OMG!!! Pure genius. Okay, now I need to take some time and figure out how this will work. I need to sit down with a class schedule and get a basic outline done. Then I need to sit with a calendar and start filling things in. I love this. This is why I love to blog so much. Writing things out really helps me think things through.

 So the plan for today is to develop a schedule for each class and start fleshing out the literacy portion. Okay, I'm good. Going to log this in my keep notes and head out to the dog park.

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