After Winter Break Plan

After Winter Break Plan

As I write this I am both excited and anxious to go back to school. I've enjoyed winter break in a way I never have before. I attempted to have a sabbatical as Angela Watson discussed on episode 244 of her podcast Truth for Teacher. My sabbatical meant I did nothing related to school for 7 days of my break. It was wonderful. I did struggle to keep my mind off school but I tried to let go of any guilt I felt and by the end I embraced rest and felt refreshed. 

I am anxious to go back to school because teaching is exhausting. I love it but it is exhausting. The shear amount of decisions we have to make on a daily basis is mind-boggling. But alas it is time to head back and I had way too much fun coming up with my plans for the first few days. I want us to ease back into school. My students have also been on a break and rebuilding our classroom community and relationships with one another is paramount as well as creating and setting expectations. 

I thought I'd share my plans with you in case you need some inspiration and if you want just steal the plans and go back to binge watching TV and relaxing because as a reminder, you are more then just a teacher. 

Day 1 and 2 Reading Class:

-Independent reading time: I ALWAYS start class with independent reading and believe it is one of the best things you can do for you and your students. 

-Show Kid President's Pep Talk to Teachers and Students: I am showing this because if we all want to be AWESOME as Kid President says then we all have to work together and create an awesome community. Our classroom expectations help us do that. 

-Create a Meme for expectations: My students and I LOVE memes. They make us giggle every single day. It is actually funny because I started adding them to my writing slides. Then the students who I teach for only reading were mad they did not get to see the meme so now it lives on both slides everyday. The kids are so into the memes that they send me their own favorite ones to put on the slideshow. ANYWAYS, students will work in pairs to create a meme based on the expectation they are assigned. I created the template above because when looking for meme generators it was difficult to find websites that were appropriate for our middle grade kiddos. Students will create their memes on day 1 and we will present them on day 2. 

Day 1 and 2 Writing Class:

-Read  Salt in his Shoes: We are going to read this because it's a great story about perseverance and setting goals for oneself.  My students also LOVE sports and Michael Jordan. On Day 2 we will be reading After the Fall.  After we read both texts, we will discuss the story's theme and add it to our Book of the Day bulletin board. I love Joanne Miller's resource for this. 

-Word of the Year Activity: I have personally been choosing a word of the year for 3 years. I LOVE it. It helps me focus on my overall goals when life gets rough. I think goal setting is something that our students should be learning about and doing. The goals don't have to be about school but about the person they want to be. Over and over again I hear that when you know who you want to be and you believe you will be that person the more likely you are to achieve it. So I want my students to be that way. 

I found an amazing resource from Andie Jayne on the blog Mama Smiles for creating a Word of the Year but I wanted to add a little bit more direction. So when you press the above link you will get a copy of the worksheet I created with guiding questions and then a link to Andie Jayne's blog post with a word list and a worksheet that I will be using as my student's final Word of the Year activity.