The Thing with Feathers (3/5)

So now I'm halfway through! I wonder if this is something that I'll actually finish. :P

I've started going through my units for next year and looking for connections with the standards. I'm also re-organizing so that the writing assignments build on each other.

This week was a bit harder than last week, because these ideas are ones that I've tried to use and they just haven't worked out completely. They might be salvageable, but I'm not sure I'm the person who can do it.

Discarding: Ideas I haven't been able to incorporate effectively

6. Course Alignment Review - I did this and students were able to make connections between the skills they practice in language arts in elementary, middle school and high school. But I didn't go back to it enough for it to stick. The thing is, I don't know that it's so important that I want to continue to spend time on it. I just don't think the payout is ultimately worth the instructional time that could be spent other ways.

15. Microsoft Word - Ok, this one? Not my fault, and not a big deal. I got the runaround on the old copies of MS Word, and then we got an offer to replace some of our dinosaur PCs with slightly-less-old Macs. So the dinosaurs are now gone and we have no use for Word for Windows. Not really a big deal; some of our newer Macs have it, and there's always TextEdit.

16. Organizing student library as lesson - Again with the question of time versus result. To really make this work, I'd have to have students read the books and fill out like a log sheet or something. And I don't want to turn it into AR.

17. Sharing the library haul - I forget. Plus I tend to get a fairly big stack when I go, so we're talking a significant amount of class time. And again, I just don't know that it would be worth the instruction or practice that would be lost.

20. Department-wide reading group - When I've sort of touched on the idea, the response has been ... considerate. Kind of like, "I'm glad you're so involved and passionate!" But then there's no interest expressed after that. And I'm just not secure enough to come right out and say "I think we should do this."

22. Phone call parties - As above; I've talked about it with one other teacher for next year. But it's not like it's something I can MAKE others work with me on, and I'm not sure I'd want to do that even if I could.

Alas, I don't have anything witty to say. Mostly that's because of the yearbook. We're distributing next Wednesday and we are NOT READY!

I still have students who haven't paid for their yearbooks yet. And our bill is coming due. Stress? Me? YES!

Here's the schedule - you can look at earlier posts in the series by clicking on the links below:

I. Continuing: Ideas that worked well
II: Repeating: Ideas I didn't implement effectively
III: Discarding: Ideas I implemented that weren't effective
IV: Tweaking: Ideas that worked but might be improved
V: Exploring: New ideas for next year!

You can read about some of my earlier plans here; it also has a link back to the one before it. If I can keep this to a weekly schedule, I'll be finishing up just before finals.

Image thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nane-zwerg