Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Welcome to crazy town...

I cannot believe it has been so long since I've posted, that's a sure sign how nuts it's been in my neck of the woods lately.  It's been an exhausting week for sure, and it's only half over.  We're smack dab in the middle of preparing for our state test in mathematics, and we had a professional day today.  Our morning started out with a presentation from our state teachers' union informing us of the new educator evaluations that will be implemented this coming fall.  It was meant to reassure educators I believe, but it really left most of us wondering how this will all come together.  It seems that they're going to be implementing the new evaluations yet don't have everything in place for them yet.  We shall see how that plays out I suppose.  It definitely sounds like a significant increase in work for us educators.  We spent the rest of our day struggling, stressing, working very productively on inputting standards and curriculum into the new mapping program that our district has decided to go with.  That in and of itself is going to be an enormous project.  Anyway, in preparing for our readers' workshop lesson tomorrow, I decided to make up a fun sheet to help my kiddos with brainstorming ideas of an adventure they would have if they found a magic, talking bone.  This is going to be used in connection with William Steig's story The Amazing Bone.  I'm hoping that along with their writing their original stories we'll also have some time left to illustrate them as well.  I'll have to remember to bring my camera to school tomorrow so I can snap some pictures.  (I wonder if it would help if I tie a string around my finger?)  You can download the graphic organizer to assist brainstorming and the writing sheet as well here.

3 comments:

  1. I am in Tennessee and we began a new teacher eval system this school year (before the system was even finished). It has been a very frustrating and stressful thing. I heard it described as trying to fly a plane before it was finished being built and that's exactly what it was like. Tennessee was one of the first to implement this process. It's called the TEAM model. What is the name of yours?

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  2. I'm in MA...to be honest, I don't know for sure if they even had a specific name of the model they are using. We were supposed to have a copy of the presentation emailed to us the following day, which still hasn't happened...=( Hopefully they will be more efficient as this process unfolds, but your analogy of trying to fly a plane before it's built...perfect!

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