What I'm Reading & Teaching in October

After a choppy start (we didn't have a full five day week of school until the fourth week of school), I finally feel like I'm settling into routines with my classes. What I'm most excited about this school year is how many students are excited about reading. Independent reading is now part of our daily routine at the start of class (I struggled to commit to that this year, but the start of class is what works best for me and the flow of my lessons). I have a variety of strategies I'm using to read the excitement of reading high and expose students to books from our classroom library they might want to read next. I am also slowly working toward my goal of connecting our independent reading with grammar and writing instruction, so far with great success.

What I'm Reading & Teaching in September

And just like that, school is back in session again. After a week of professional development (good, but still made my head want to explode. I'm back in the classroom with full classes of students for the first time in about a year and a half. 

I am feeling incredibly anxious about the health risks of being in a room full of students who are largely too young to be vaccinated. While, my school (and state) is mandating masks for everyone and students' seats are three feet apart, I worry that it will not be enough to prevent the kind of horror stories I'm hearing from teachers in the South and West who have been back at school for weeks now.