Educators are always shifting and sorting time to meet multiple goals including students' needs, interests, and curriculum expectations.
Today I'll shift the learning from the planned climate change projects to math review since we have short time to prepare for a math test next week. I'll use the Thursday afternoon slot to forward the climate change projects instead. The early morning teaching time is gold when it comes to good listening and readiness for optimal learning. Since the math review is less engaging, I'll need that good time to help students focus and get through it whereas the climate change projects are engaging so students will be able to focus on that at the end of the day.
As educators we're always using time with creativity and focus--we understand times that are rich with regard to learning and time that has less potential for good learning.
We have about five weeks of learning until the state academic tests--in a sense, it's crunch time to review all the standards tested. Then we'll have the tests and after that we move into the project-based learning section of the year--a time totally devoted to engaging projects. While this crunch time is not my favorite, I don't think it's a bad idea to have different kinds of focus throughout the year--it makes the year more interesting when we do that.
