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Monday, May 27, 2013

Peter Pan...

I felt the hardest part of teaching Peter Pan this year was that I had to constantly look at the lesson plan from Expeditionary Learning.  I literally was learning along side the kids!  Every morning making the anchor charts and getting the right worksheets out to use on the document reader has been a lot of prep work, yet I always felt during the lesson at some point, I was missing a step or a chart!  These lessons expect you to fit a ton of material in an hour, this year I had an hour and fifteen minutes and it would still take me two days to get through one lesson.  I tried to go through the lessons with a fine tooth comb and make sure everything is included.  I finally finished making Unit 1 and I've started making Unit 2 which is like 14 lessons and Unit 3 is another 10 lessons! As soon as I'm done with Peter Pan, I will get a move on with Module 1.  Being that I didn't teach that Module this year (it was released in November) I need to spend more time reading it through to fully understand the "central idea". My goal is to have Module 1 Unit 1 complete before July.  I hope that deadline works for everyone!


Love Always,

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Stepping it Up!

I've been examining the top selling materials made and sold by teachers on TpT and trying to get a handle on this new venture I've decided to take on!  I can't get over how absolutely amazing the work is that people are creating.  There are really incredible teachers out there!  It's time to step up my game!

When I started teaching the 3rd grade modules this year, the 1st module was not out yet, so I haven't had any materials for the first module created yet.  I decided that Module 1 was going to be where I'm going to show myself what I'm really capable of!

The area of focus for Module 1 is Superheroes of Reading from Around the World which is actually a pretty intense topic.  It's going to be interesting to see how well the students are able to grasp it.  Since this is such an intense unit I felt like I needed to lighten it up with a Superhero theme! 


Love Always,

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Welcome to Common Core with Style!



I am over the moon excited about my new blog!  I am so grateful for the help from Megan over at Bird in Hand Designs... she did an amazing job reading my mind and delivering exactly what I wanted!  I highly recommend her to anyone out there starting a blog! 

I will mainly be blogging about my experiences with the "New" New York State Common Core Curriculum for 3rd Grade since that is a major hot topic right now.  I spent the 2012-2013 school year putting my blood, sweat, and tears into modifying this "curriculum" for my students.  Since I am in one of the few districts in New York that decided to dive in head first this year, I thought I would share my experiences with all of you! 

We are on this journey together so why not blog about it?