You can't anticipate every change and upset in the classroom. Often a challenge appears, and that's when those with flexible, positive mindsets do well--the kind of people that roll with it as they say. The end of the year brings many unexpected moments, and this year I don't want to forget that as we navigate the dense schedule ahead.
To prepare for this, I'll make time to clean up, sort, discard, and rearrange. So many of the materials around the room are no longer needed at this time of the year and some well filed materials are needed so it's very important make the switch between what we no longer need and what's needed now.
There's lots of decisions to be made with the team as we navigate the end of the year with our new shared teaching model--how and who will lead each initiative? That will impact the clean up too. I suspect that we'll divide and conquer the schedule since there is not a lot of open time slots to complete all the tasks.
How will testing affect our shared model too? With nine days of standardized testing and one day for a system-wide math test, will we decide to rotate or will we spend the afternoons working as a team on play practice, the biography projects, and STEAM events? It's likely that we won't rotate on these days given the fact that our typical supports are not available on testing days and the tech is also not available which compromises our typical rotation. Also, after a morning of testing, students are usually not that open minded to the typical routine.
The first step of this end-of-year journey is to meet with my colleagues and work together to make a good plan. Hopefully we'll be able to do that on Monday!
