This week was a whirlwind of meetings, leadership obligations, and managing student behavior, but I stuck with my mantra "I'm going to ROCK this week!"

​-Mae

This week flew by, and I knew it would! I am so glad I spent the three day weekend resting up and planning. I knew teaching a 2/3 split class would be a challenge, and I am enjoying the challenge. So far most things have been staying the same like Guided Reading, Science, and Writing. But some things will need to change soon.

I am figuring out how to teach two different curriculum topics to two different grade levels while still respecting the different learning paces of my students. I have higher achieving 2nd graders, and lower achieving 3rd graders. This upcoming week I think I am going to play around with Pear Deck, which allows you to project your lessons onto the devices of your students and engage them with interactive real time questions, scenarios, writing, drawing, and voting. This is a subscription based tool, but they have a limited free version available. 

For writing I will probably be diving deeper into Michael Friermood's Keep It Fresh! Writing Bundles. If you haven't checked out Michael's stuff or his blog you definitely should. His products are amazing. In my video I mention an end of year activity we did called an Inspirational Quote Quilt. Not only did my kiddos have a blast making it last year, but it served as a great community builder for this year!

I also mention that I have been using Mystery Science. I absolutely LOVE this program! It gives you the option when you first sign up to do your state's science standard or to follow the NGSS. I chose the NGSS and it has been working out really well for me, especially because they were really confusing to me when I first looked at them over summer! 

Lastly, I did end up going to Old Navy on Sunday, but I didn't end up buying anything. I tried on some Pixie Pants (my favorite work pant) to check out some different colors. Their sale right now is an extra 20% off online and in store with their website coupon. Site wide select styles of pants are already marked down 40%. If you are not a subscriber I would highly recommend signing up, they will give you 30% off right away. If you don't like a slim pant I would go with the Harper style (it needs an ironed crease to look super chic though, and they can stretch out, so be careful of the size you choose.) I will be waiting for Old Navy to release their Fall Pixie colors before purchasing more pants or tops for now.

How was your short week? Anything interesting or fun happen over the weekend?

-Mae