Summer Planning

Teachers are completely nuts - you know that, right?  We have 10 whole weeks worth of beautiful, lazy, school-free, summer days available for turning off our brains, and what do we do?  Plan for next year.

Silly Rabbit - summer is for fun!

 Of course, some of us actually think planning for next year IS fun and that's a whole different disorder!

But, I am thinking about next year (and I do kind of enjoy it:) so I am going through my beginning of the year bag of tricks.  Top of the list - teaching PROCEDURES! We have to make sure our little darlings know exactly what is expected of them and model those expectations step by step.  Teeny tiny, itty bitty, piece by piece steps.  It can be tedious, but it will make the rest of the year much easier!

Speaking of tedious, I don't want the kids to feel like learning and following procedures is tedious, so I try to find ways to make it fun, or at least less like "work."

Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago that we sing during clean up or transitions.  It gives us a reminder of the procedures for being ready to listen and a time frame to get ready.  We sing the poem as we tidy up and are ready when the poem ends.  (And after some of our messier moments, we may have to sing it twice!)

Click here

~Nikki