InstaDigest April 24 - May 5
What We Did + What It Looked Like
Hi, everyone! First, a little message from me before we dive into my lesson plans:
Please note: we are extending our early bird pricing until May 15 to make it easier for teachers to obtain school funding to help pay for this professional learning experience.
Okay. Now onto the digest:
These two weeks featured a big, all-day field trip for 8th graders, the beginning of two new units (Macbeth for the 8th grade and graphic novel memoir scenes for 7th), and me missing four days of school due to medical appointments and procedures for my husband. (UGH. Missing school is THE WORST.)
To be honest, I miss school a lot more than I would like. I miss school for professional development workshops and speaking engagements (I have an extra six days built into my contract for professional development work), and my husband has been in cancer treatment for the last 18 months, causing me to miss class periods and days pretty frequently.
So, keeping my students going even when I’m not there is super important to me. If I missed one day every once in awhile due to illness, I might be more inclined to have loosey-goosey independent reading days when I’m gone, but I just can’t these days.
Here’s the key: screencast mini-lessons. My very-casual and super-imperfect quick screencast lessons ensure that my kids can keep working when I can’t be there. It has absolutely saved my life over the last year.
One more thing I want you to know as you look at this week’s plans: I am the luckiest teacher to have a partner in the social studies department who also teaches writing. So my 7th graders have been having lessons in their social studies class that contribute to their Holocaust graphic memoir scenes, too. Sam has taught them about the difference between “PBS history” and “movie history” to help them transform their survivor’s testimony into a historically-accurate narrative. She’s taught them about researching to add historically-accurate details. It’s such a gift.
Okay. Here’s what we did, and then, of course, a bit of what life looks like around here: