Next Year, I'm Definitely Going To...

Hello everyone! I'm back in action here. :) It's been just a tad bit cuh-RAZY at work, as you all well know. We aren't out until June 20, but with testing, assembly prep (my students are singing "Surfin' USA" and are cute as all get out, although I don't think I ever want to hear that song again after Wednesday afternoon), end of year filing, etc... It's all kinds of crazy.

But I was blog hoppin' a bit and found this great linky from Finding JOY in 6th Grade...

 

I just had to partake. :)

At the beginning of every quarter, I swear up and down that I'm not going to fall behind with grades, that I'm going to enter them in our electronic gradebook the day I give an assignment... Then life happens, and I have a pile of papers roughly the size of a phone book to grade! That's my life this week, anyways. I really MUST make sure I set aside time to grade each day... And I think part of that will mean spreading out the days I give assessments. Does anyone else give a million on Fridays? Anyways, something that I have found helpful when it comes to report card time is keeping track of the end-of-quarter grades so I can see at a glance how kids are doing from quarter to quarter. I know, there's probably some way to easily see that electronically, but I like to have a paper version in my gradebook that I can use to check very quickly. I made the form below (click it to download FREE) to help me track those end of term grades:

I find the process of forming guided reading and even writing groups to be a pretty easy thing, but for math, that's a whole new thing. We're moving away from Everyday Math next year and making teacher-written units, so perhaps it will be easier to group kids based on a particular skill. I need to make sure we have more of a mini-lesson/guided practice/independent practice and conferring set-up... and more math games, too.

Our school district is becoming pretty big on UBD, but I'm definitely guilty of not having a unit entirely finished before I start teaching it! My goal is to get it together and have those units totally done before I start teaching them... Printables, rubrics, and all.

Well, I'm off to grade and laminate some more before bed... Have a great week! :)