Welcome to Winter

Week 2 began with a luxurious 3-day weekend for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  But then there were delays and a cancellation.  All of which are fine.  Except that it does pose challenges to completing units of lessons.  The disjuncture brought by days absent from the work hinder learning and simple remembering.  It takes away the cohesion of a cohesive unit.  It is true that students who miss more school have a harder time learning the content than students who are present consistently - the lessons really do flow from one to the next.  Unfortunately the winter weather has broken carefully laid plays into choppy games of catch-up, review, and often hurried attempts at pushing through the final material.  At least that is what I typically feel when faced with several snow days or multiple student absences.

Currently, these concerns have surfaced for me as I try to finish up a chapter in social studies about the colonies, pushing back the beginning of the next unit for another week!  On the other hand, I think the priority lies in learning the content at hand well before moving onto new material rather than rushing through a check-list agenda for the sake of "completion".  So I will take a breath and slow down as I lay plans and prepare to be flexible!  Speaking of progress, I must say the bulletin board I put together for the chapter on the colonies has be useful (I have been referring to it during social studies regularly).  I hope to add my QR codes to the bulletin board to link to the chapter review on prezi!

I also want to mention my awesome little desk and work station.

It has been great getting back into the school mode.  Now if Mother Nature would cooperate and give me more days!