It's that time of summer when I canNOT turn my teacher brain off. I go back in a week so I've been working on my class schedule for this year.
I love to see other teachers' schedules for inspiration so I thought I would share my schedule for this year. Of course things might need to be altered if they make changes to my lunch or specials time. But for now, this is what I'll be following.
I will be changing how I do mini-lessons this year and truly keep them MINI. So I will be doing my interactive read alouds right before we go to specials. During IRA I will do think-alouds, and have students turn and talk. I decided to do it this way so it breaks up the amount of time students are sitting on the carpet for instruction. I like to keep them moving as much as possible.
I also have a separate time for Vocabulary because I believe it's important to devote a good chunk of time to it since it is one of the biggest factors in improving reading comprehension. I use Valuable Vocabulary which can be found in my store.
I have used this for a couple of years now and kids love it and always say they love Vocabulary time. I'm currently working on making all the units teacher friendly. If you are interested in looking at the books I use, you can download the map with clickable links for the whole year here.
My Writing/Grammar block will be a bit different this year. I really want to teach grammar in a more authentic way so that kids are not only able to identify a part of speech but they are also able to write using them correctly in their own writing. So that block will be a trial and error at the beginning.
This schedule won't be fully implemented until about the 3rd or even 4th week of school. We practice a lot of routines and procedures in the beginning so our schedule will be off. But it's so worth it in the end because the class runs smoothly and you are able to really dive into instruction.
Teachers go back in a week! When do you get back to reality?
