Thursday, March 22, 2012

The final stretch begins.....

As I sit at Spring Conferences, anxiously awaiting 7:00 and the official beginning of my Spring Break, I start to think about the plans for the last unit and how I am going to keep the students engaged and on task for the last 6 weeks of school.

This is always a challenge, because no matter how I prepare for it, the last weeks of school are always crazy. Between golf, soccer, track, ACT, senior events and assemblies, the deck seems to be stacked against keeping the kids focused on school the last 6 weeks.

To help combat the "Spring Fever", I have really tightened up my last unit. I have broken up due dates, and rather than having a few things due at once, I have assignments due or a quiz everyday. I have remembered to follow my own advice and factor in some fun as well.

We are going to review numbers and ordinals, AGAIN. I am also going to revisit direction words, such as: in front of, behind, underneath, etc. The reward will be that the kids get to do a scavenger hunt. This is an activity that I love, but frankly is almost impossible to pull off because I need to dedicate almost an entire class period to make it work. My secret plan (don't tell anyone) is to encourage the kids to work ahead. In the classes where I can make this happen, we can do the scavenger hunt. If there are classes where this doesn't happen (say for instance, my 4th block, wink) they will not get to do the scavenger hunt.

Hopefully this will help keep them on track and on task during April. We shall see....sometimes my sneaky plans flop.

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