The Workday Teacher

It's Thursday and it's my first day this week with students. Our benchmark window has also opened today so we are taking care of business early! Students are working diligently this morning on their Language Arts benchmark. I know they will do wonderful :)

With today being the first day with students, we have had two - much needed - teacher workdays Tuesday and Wednesday. I figured since this was a topic not typically discussed on my blog, I might as well open the door to my classroom and fill you in on the list of things I make to accomplish for teacher workdays.

Tuesday was a busy day! We had a professional development workshop first thing in the morning. It went fabulous! I attended a session called: Promoting Literacy in ELA and Social Studies. (Perfect fit since that is what I teach!) It was held by our curriculum specialists Celeste and Adam. They did a wonderful job and definitely taught helpful information for both of my content areas. They even reminded us of the awesome Gaston County website that they have created with helpful hints and tips. Check out Celeste's LANGUAGE ARTS site; Check out Adam's SOCIAL STUDIES site!

After the workshop we had the rest of the afternoon in our classrooms to get whatever we needed complete. I tackled the lovely timelines that my students did for the four ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, India, Greece, and Rome. They were fantastic! I absolutely loved them and I feel that my students really enjoyed working on them too. Below is what my desk looked like trying to reorganize and get through them:

Grading the timelines took me to basketball practice at 3pm. So the rest would wait until Wednesday. Wednesday was almost the opposite time-wise compared to Tuesday. Wednesday we had the morning to complete our personal agendas, then moved into a Faculty meeting at 1pm. The morning consisted of the final timelines to be graded, entering grades into NCWise for the 2nd 9 week period, organizing my room, and getting ready for RESEARCH!!! We are beginning our two-week stint in the Media Center to teach students the research process and get them writing their very first research paper! I love this unit and can not wait to get started. However....this takes copies, and copies, and more copies, for students to use, reference to, and get assistance from. Here's just a sneak peek at the multiple help sheets:

To end our workday Wednesday we had a faculty meeting that also double-timed into a mini workshop! It was on a great new website called ClassScape. It is helpful for assessments and students getting specific standard geared questions. You can even schedule assessments for students. Along with students taking the assessments that you assign individually, you can also take the assessment as a class, project it on your SmartBoard, and go over it together! It is fantastic! I can not wait to use it and jump into getting my classes and kiddos interested. If you visit the link above here is a picture of what you'll see and how to get started: 

Hope you enjoyed the glimpse into my busy and always hectic teacher workdays! Now it's time to keep moving on through the regular school days. Have a fabulous Thursday and Friday....until next week :)