August Planning

There are only a few weeks until school starts again, so it's that bittersweet part of the summer where I'm savoring the last bits of vacation and also getting serious about my back to school planning.

I think (you never know) that I'll be teaching Algebra 1 and Geometry this year. My biggest change over the last year, which I plan to really flesh out this year, is the use of Interactive Notebooks. (I call them INBs, though I know that a lot of teachers call them ISNs.)

I teach in a school where getting students to consistently do homework is very difficult. It's just not part of the norm. I've gone from assigning homework every day, to most days, to twice a week, and now this year I have a new plan. I'm going to make small problem sets with spiraled work which are only given once a week. (Homework is always graded on effort/completion, not accuracy. I firmly believe that homework should be a no-risk opportunity to try and sometimes fail. Tests and quizzes are a higher risk time to try and possibly fail. We have enough of that.) It might sound crazy to only give homework once a week, but I'm hoping to create a mindset shift. I want students to view this problem set as something more like a project - something that they have more time to work on and is therefore worthy of its point value.

Because I want students to learn the value of their INBs, I'm going to make my weekly graded assessment open-notebook. That should motivate every student to do a good job with the notebook. This past year I didn't give tests (to me that means larger, longer, more structured in-class assessments). That did not work out so well. By the time we got to Regents review, students did not seem to be as comfortable handling the practice tests. I think it was because they were overwhelmed by the structure. To combat that this year, I'm going to give a "Marking Period Exam" (oooh, doesn't that sound big and important?). That means there will be a graded test roughly every 6 weeks, and I'll give a practice test about a week in advance so the students can freak out about the practice test instead of the real test. Hopefully this will also minimize the lost instructional time for tests.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my curriculum plans. I'm happy with my Algebra 1 outline, but only time will tell if my Geometry plan is ideal.

I'm still thinking through how I want to organize the classroom, group students, keep track of student work. Maybe seat students in pairs that can quickly turn to become groups of 4? With different classroom jobs for each person in the group? Folders for each student organized by group?

Aside from considering the teaching for the year, I'm anxious about my LIFE this school year. How am I going to maintain my work-life balance? I can't be the workaholic perfectionist I've been in the past. How am I going to figure out how to create/re-work lessons more efficiently and still have them meet my personal standards?

What new ideas are you trying out this year? How do you keep the work-life balance from sliding too far to one side?