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Planning Ahead



Just a little walk in Joliet, Montana
It's summer, and I am enjoying my freedom. However, I have devoted quite a bit of time to planning for next year. I've been creating a brand new website, collaborating with other teachers, helping to develop a new writing prompt for all seventh-grade students,  and contemplating ways to capture the hearts and minds of my students in the upcoming year.

  Of course, I have had time to relax. During the school year I don't have much time to read books of my choosing. I've read several this summer:  Fates and Furies, The Promise, The Wife Between Us, Everybody Always, and even a trashy true crime book!  I also purchased Great Alone by Kristen Hannah, as well as Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.  I  visited my dad in Joliet, Montana!  What a culture shock!  Population of 497! SO beautiful but overjoyed to step back on to San Diego soil.   
One of the many deer I saw on my walks  Look carefully!


 Back to teacher talk!  One of my challenges in the upcoming year will be differentiating instruction for both my honors and college prep  classes.  This year I will be teaching both classes and want to provide students with unique, individualized experiences.  Last year I eliminated homework in all of my college prep classes and overall was thrilled with the results.  The only issue I had was that we had to do SO much reading in class rather than students doing it at home. This meant that we didn't have as much time for some of the great activities I'd done in the past.  Therefore, this year there will be some reading assigned as homework.  Honors students will be expected to read a bit more on their own.  There just isn't enough time to read all of the novels and stories aloud!
Another differentiation I am planning is assigning an Article of the Week to my honors students.  This is an activity I stole from my idol, Kelly Gallagher a few years ago.  Students receive an article each Friday. On their own, they must read the article, mark the text, and make annotations in the margins. Then, they  write a half-page summary and half-page personal response.  This activity not only provides critical reading practice but provides students with background knowledge that will come in handy as they grapple with other texts. Plus, it just makes them more interesting, informed humans! However,  I feel it's important that my college prep students be exposed to the Article of the Week, but I plan on doing it differently with them.  Instead, it will be the Article of the Every Other Week, and I will scaffold the activity for them. We will spend a few minutes a few days a week on the article. I will likely choose different articles that may not be quite as challenging. I may also assign different activities for them to show their comprehension and express their opinions.

 These are just two of the many ways to differentiate I have come up with so far. I am a firm believer that being in honors should not mean "more homework". Instead, students should be expected to go deeper and be more independent than a college prep student. I also believe that with scaffolding and modeling, college prep students can do many of the activities that my honors students do!

 I'm looking forward to teaching both groups of students this year. 

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