Slice of Life - 10 Things Right Now

Sundays begin a new week.  The first begins a new month and often both events encourage a little reflection.  I first heard of this idea for writing from Ali Edwards and love how this makes me focus on the moment right now.

1.  I'm so excited to captured snippets of my classroom/professional life this month here and I woke up this morning considering a notebook, paper and pencil for maybe a personal month of slicing.

2.  I'm making a list of things I need to get ready for a new student who is starting tomorrow.  I want him to feel welcomed and not overwhelmed or left out.  It's amazing all the little things that get done earlier in the year to make a classroom function.

3.  I need to take some pet supplies I ordered to school tomorrow.  The turtle needed a new heat lamp and bulb.  The fish needed new filters and I got things to set up a fire belly toad habitat.  I've never had fire belly toads and I'm feeling a bit nervous but they are so cute!

4.  I need to be more consistent with my documentation of our work together and I have some thinking to make that happen.

5.  I spent last week having special reading meetings with my students.  It's been a while since I've taught second grade and I wanted to do two things.  I wanted to make sure my students were on target for district benchmarks.  I wanted to confirm with evidence my students were growing and my teaching was working.  Ok, I had three reasons; I wanted to use current data to help me plan.

6.  I need to collect my piles of books I ordered and purchased in the last couple of weeks for the room.  It was a bit dangerous having delays or snow/cold days off.  

7.  It's been excited to plan and carryout science experiments with my students and I can't wait to plan more tonight.  Their excitement generates more for me.  It's easy to forget how discovering and uncovering learning for the first time can be.

8.  I am very grateful for friends in another building who were so kind to electronically share with me their air and weather activities.  It really got my brain going and jumpstarted our learning.

9.  It's overwhelming making a grade level change but I love it!  So with this love and feeling that my whole self is grounded personally and professionally I remind myself take each day at a time, take notes for next year and breathe.

10.  Making time for short transitional book read alouds has been very important!  Our reading workshop is in a flurry.  Students are reading easier text and excited about finishing more books.  Students are reading books they might have missed because sometimes reading thicker is perceived as better.  Students are getting to know characters better because they are reading more about them.

Thank you Two Writing Teachers for fostering and organizing this writing challenge.