Finally Summer Break...Can I Get A Do-Over?!?!?!

Well summer break is finally here and it is time to look back on the past year and reflect. But honestly, all I can think of is how in so many areas, I want a "do-over."

Let me explain.. This was my first year teaching 5th grade. I also looped up with my 4th graders to 5th. It was genuinely a great year, but I still made some "rookie" mistakes! First off all I was horribly disorganized. I have never been one of those teachers that had the perfect room award, but I let it get out of hand. This may be why I was still plugging away at cleaning and packing my room long after the rest of my team had finished and packed in in to start summer break last Friday. I did get finished at about 4pm which is not bad, but I will still have some damage control to do in August.

Another area I wish I had done better was with WBT. I started out strong..taught them the 5  rules, "class/yes", "Teach-Ok", and a little of the "mirror" technique but had a hard time with consistency and especially keeping up with the scoreboard. My kids loved what we did do, but next year, I will go full-on.

I also failed miserably at saying "NO."  I took on way more than I should have responsibility-wise, including sitting on several committees, and book studies. I need to be able to control the level of commitment and balance my life. With Common Core kicking in next year, I am going to be in over my head. Plus our principal is not allowing us to team teach so I am going to be picking up both Math and Science, along with Writing.

Finally, I have not kept up with this blog!!!!! Now that summer I here, I will do fine, but once school is back on in mid-August, I am going to try not to blog so sporadically, and will share all the exciting things going on in my classroom.

So for those of you who are already on break....we survived another year!!! And to those still plugging away..the end is in sight.  Here's to a productive summer!

Finally, a huge THANK YOU to all my followers...thanks for hanging in there. I promise some fun stuff this summer!!