Back to school is RAPIDLY approaching and summer is winding down. In general, I love our school schedule as it provides a lot of days off, but tomorrow is our first 1/2 day of PD, then we go back on Monday for staff meetings and kids come next Thursday! In fact, kiddos were at the school today picking up their schedules, so it's official - summer is pretty much over!
Sadly that means it's time to focus!
First goal - Make a calendar!
Years ago, I found a calendar similar to the one pictured on the right online, but that site went away at some point, so I had to make my own. It's okay - that allows me to use shading for our days off. You'll notice the boxes aren't huge - this is just a "big picture" calendar and not meant for a lot of details.
Second goal - Block off even more days!
Now that I have my calendar set up and printed, I usually mark off the days that I know for sure won't be used for content - you know, those first days of school when you are setting up procedures and the days at the end of each semester for final exam review / finals.
Third goal - Figure out pacing!
Now it's time to look at my curriculum and standards and kind of give myself a general goal of each unit / chapter. For example, Unit 1 might take ~3 weeks, so I'll mark U1 ------> for the first 3 weeks and continue on. Of course, you are working around days off and trying to get through a certain number of units before the semester ends. This isn't a daily schedule, this is just based on the order of topics and a general guide based on your district's curriculum map / textbook suggestion. I usually build in an extra day or two for each unit / chapter because we all know that things happen and we need to budget flex time for things like fire drills, teacher absence, or even just needing an extra day to practice a concept.
Finally...
Now that I have a general guide for one of my preps, it's time to repeat it again for the other preps!
Getting the big picture in mind really helps me with some of the anxiety of back to school and gives me a roadmap for the semester. After that is in place, then my brain is free to focus more on some of the day to day details of the first couple of weeks.
How do you plan out your year?
If you are interested in joining in the #MTBoSBlaugust fun, here's a post with some prompts to help you out! The idea is just to blog / micro-blog during August to help us focus and reflect on the year ahead. Please tag your post on Social Media with the hashtag #MTBoSBlaugust so we can support you in your blogging journey!
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