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Ah, Summer Time!

I'm a bit late posting this since I've been out of school since the 24th of May, but what can I say, I've been enjoying myself!  I have officially survived my first year teaching middle school and have come away with a wealth of information.

Here is a shortlist of what is needed:

1) Great classroom management skills.

2) A sense of humor

3) the ability to adapt to LOTS of changes

4) Organization!

5) Lots of Pre-Planning


Changes for next year:

1) Start with my end of the year classroom management at the beginning of the year.

2) Units instead of textbook utilization

3) Biblical emphasis within the curriculum

4) More hands on projects and activities

5) Standards Based Tracking and Dare I say grading?!

6) Common Core Implementation

7) Writing

For Now:

I'm revamping my lessons this summer.  I'm implementing more hands on projects and discovery based lessons and I'm even looking at working a flipped classroom.  I noticed one thing I did this year was get in a comfortable routine of how my classes ran.  Warm-up, lesson power point, workbook exercises, homework... rinse, repeat, quiz, test... rinse, repeat... BORING!

What I did get to do the last 9 weeks was more projects.  We did a cross-curricular literacy project. A cross-curricular music project, we threw in some history lessons of mathematicians, but I want to spread this out throughout the year. 

Congratulations to all the first year teachers who made it through the year!  I hope that you get much needed rest this summer, and of course lots of pre-planning done!
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