And the beat goes on....

We, teachers, should not stop preparing even though the school year is over. The summer should be time for professional development and growth. That is not to say that we have not earned ourselves a little fun. One thing I hate hearing from my fellow teachers is how they shut down in the summer.

However, I have spent the summer analyzing my career and thinking about my next move. I attended a week long training on implementing STEM in the classroom and collaborated with a great team of teachers from my school on making our STEM club fantastic in our final year as a school. Next week, I get to attending a two-day training on Chromebooks and how the county wants them to be used in our classes.

I have previously shared my amazing crossover between Harry Potter and Class Dojo that I plan on implementing in my classroom on the first day of school. I hope to be able to present Class Dojo to the parents of my students, at a meet the teachers night before school starts. This great implementation is not my only idea that I have for next school year.

So on to the important business of this post. I want to start by telling you all about my failed expectations last year. Last year, was my first time teaching reading (outside of student teaching and subbing). I thought I would do monthly book reports and they would be all artsy and the students would love them! Guess what?! Students hate book reports and they do not turn them in! I went into the experience believing that my students would meet this expectation, and sometimes they did but most of the time, they did not! I felt defeated and was sure that I would never do mandatory book reports again.

Since my classroom will be exclusively 1:1, I figured that I would try to go as paperless as possible. This is when I decided to use all the tools that the county has provided to make sure that my classroom had a completely blended and technology experience. With Microsoft Forms, I created a digital reading log for students to access (number of times a week that this will be required to be filled out is still up in the air).

Reading Log

Above is the reading log that I shared with my co-teacher. It is the rough draft of what I want to use. I plan linking this to my county page and my class dojo that will be set up for my reading students. I have not decided on if this will be a nightly requirement or three times a week. However, this my plan. As students grow throughout the year, questions will change and evolve. I also want to add how many minutes they read. This is just one more thing I cannot report back on the success or failure of this endeavor! Have a great weekend and remember to keep up the great work!