What I'm Reading & Teaching in April

Spring is finally here, bringing warmer weather and more hours of daylight. I can feel the effects on my energy levels and students' as well. Once the mornings are a little less chilly, I'll start planning lessons that we can take outdoors again. 

The infographic project at the end of our "facing fear" unit went really well, and so did our personal narratives for some students. However, too many just aren't taking the revision and editing process seriously. Next year, I will have to work out how to spend more time working on making those changes in small groups. We just wrapped up our March Madness Poetry Tournament and our winner was "Water" by Rudy Francisco.

Right now, I'm coasting a bit through the start of our new unit on "dealing with disaster" because I've previously taught all of the shorter texts we start the unit with. I will have some work to do when we start our parallel novels at the end of this month. 

What I'm Reading & Teaching in March

For the shortest month of the year, February sure felt long. For me it was likely less because of teaching and more because of interruptions to my sleep thanks to my own children (I don't function well without a full night of sleep). I wasn't super productive during my time to work at work and ended up doing too many things at home. We also had parent conferences, a field trip, and a day off for President's Day thrown in there, so maybe part of the problem was never quite settling into a rhythm. Whatever the root of my February problems, I'm trying to reset my energy and focus for March.

There were some positives in February. My students enjoyed our literature circles just as much as I did and since covid cases are way down, we are allowed to put student desks together again. That also means being allowed to pull small groups, which I've been struggling with not being able to do all year. Especially because I teach a 90 minute block, being able to pull different groups of students or have different groups of students work together throughout a class period is a must.