The month of October is leaving me feeling a little frustrated. Too many students are still struggling with classroom routines. It's been more difficult to engage students in independent reading this year. I've done less choice writing than last year instead of more. There is never enough time to catch up students who are behind or need remediation. I could go on.
Instead I'm going to take some deep breaths and think about how to reset for the month of November. I know I will need to do a review of expectations this week since Halloween was on Monday, students had off on Friday due to parent/teacher conferences, and we had a field trip on Thursday.
As I plan my lessons for the month of November, I am going to continue to shorten the length of activities, knowing that this year's group of students doesn't have the same stamina as previous years. When we finish our novel unit and resume independent reading, I will use reading sprints to break up the chunk of time at the end of class I have dedicated to independent reading. Finally, I am going to make student behavior my priority and hold myself to having students reflect on their behavior during lunch, make their own phone calls home, etc. even though that means losing time to plan, grade, and create materials during the school day.
