Reader's Notebooks

Now that we are really into the swing of things over here, we have gotten well into our Interactive Student Notebooks for Reading.  At the beginning of the school year, I purchased these 2 amazing products from Teachers Pay Teachers (where else?!):  the Interactive Reading Literature Notebooks pack & the Interactive Reading Informational Text Notebooks pack.  I cannot say enough about these awesome packs. They have made notebooking SO much easier!  Not to mention, my students LOVE these.  And to be honest, I was a little skeptical at first...not of the product, but of my students' interest and involvement with them.  But my class has surprised me and they really do love using their notebooks.  It's been a bit of an interesting transition using scissors, glue, colored pencils, and markers with them, but they are doing a great job!

We are currently reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and the notebooks have been the perfect partner for our learning.  My students have been doing a great job keeping up with their notes and their own learning, and are starting to make those connections throughout their school day.  Check out some of their work!

Hello?

Well...it's been a while.  I've been less than successful in my attempts to keep up with this blog.  Life just got in the way.  The school year ended, & I never even looked at this blog.  Yikes.  But!  It's a new [school] year, & I'm determined to get better at this.

Full disclosure:  I may have said this last year at this time, too.

The  new school year has started, & after 3 days, I'm exhausted!  Imagine that.  It is 90+ degrees in my classroom, so the kids & I are definitely spent by the end of the day.  We've spent the first days of this year getting to know one another & familiarizing ourselves with 6th grade policies, procedures, & general *life*.  This year I have 2 sections of 6th grade to teach, so I'll spend the morning teaching Reading, Writing, Spelling, & Social Studies.  Then we'll switch around lunch time, & I'll do it all over again with the other class.

Things are going to be a bit different this year with the hybrid new & old standards (Common Core, anyone?!), so I suspect there'll be an interesting learning curve for all of us throughout the year.  My Social Studies standards have changed considerably, too, so it's an understatement to say that I'm mildly overwhelmed.  I'm hoping to explore some new resources & adapt my way of teaching so my students are really ready to change their way thinking!  Sounds easy, right?

One really fun thing that I'm excited about for this school year?  My son (3.5 years old) will be attending the Montessori preschool in my building, so he'll be with me every morning.  I can't wait to look out my classroom window to see him playing with his classmates on the playground!