Prep Week To-Do List
Aug. 29th, 2004 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageSchool starts a week from Tuesday, which means most teachers will spend many hours this week in their classrooms, getting ready for the Big Day. My to-do list has been growing all week long already - every time I thought of something, I wrote it down. Here's the (not really very) condensed version.
1) Organize classroom furniture the way I want it, probably rows of desks.
2) Dig up from the "storage" portable, an extra filing cabinet and a small bookcase for my big-and-growing collection of teaching resources. Find room for these items within two steps of my desk.
3) Unpack the four big rubbermaid bins full of resources of all descriptions, onto or into the aforementioned cabinet and bookshelf.
4) Track down the French resources which will be at my disposal, and find new storage near my desk for them. (I believe they have the Actie-Vie kits, which are wonderful. I may even use a published French program for once!)
5) Raid the bookroom for two possible novel studies, one that the whole class will (hopefully) be able to handle, and one more in case some have already read the first.
6) Plan the beginning stages of my Literacy Circles program (including charts for what do to on which day of the week, massive piles of photocopies of Activity Sheets, organizing said activity sheets in some manageable way that the kids can figure out, and planning how to mark all the resulting completed activities. Oh, and planning how to track who has finished them and who needs to be chased.)
7) Photocopy and arrange storage for Addition and Subtraction Drill Sheets; also post the rules governing this part of the day. (Ten minutes, three times a week, on the same skill, until it has been mastered three times; then they get two days off to play during that time, before going on to the next skill.)
8) Acquire notebooks, duotangs, pencils, erasers, rulers, agendas, pencil crayons, etc, for all the subjects I'm teaching. (I think it's ten different sets, but I may add to that before the week is out.)
9) Laminate all the lovely bulletin board stuff I bought back in June. (This has to be done at the Teachers' College, which is fortunately not far from my house. I should have done this at some point during the summer, but didn't.)
10) Put up all the lovely bulletin board stuff I bought, and make up cards for two different Word Walls, one English, one French. Plus a section for math vocabulary and maps.
11) Organize a Salad Club amongst interested teachers. (I'm really hoping I get at least five people in it, so we each have one day a week to bring a salad.)
12) Type up and post my schedule and the students' schedules.
13) Investigate supplies of recorders and sheet music programmes for them, or find out how to purchase same. Also dig up and learn to play a few simple choral pieces, for the week or two before we have recorders for everyone. (I'm looking forward to teaching the recorder, one step ahead of the kids, but I also want to teach them to sing. I wonder if any of the other teachers play the piano? Playing and leading at the same time takes more skill than I possess.)
Spots 14-20 on this list are currently blank. By tomorrow at noon they will be full.
Anyone still think teachers do nothing all summer? (If you do think that, be smart enough not to tell me so after I've spent a day moving desks.)
1) Organize classroom furniture the way I want it, probably rows of desks.
2) Dig up from the "storage" portable, an extra filing cabinet and a small bookcase for my big-and-growing collection of teaching resources. Find room for these items within two steps of my desk.
3) Unpack the four big rubbermaid bins full of resources of all descriptions, onto or into the aforementioned cabinet and bookshelf.
4) Track down the French resources which will be at my disposal, and find new storage near my desk for them. (I believe they have the Actie-Vie kits, which are wonderful. I may even use a published French program for once!)
5) Raid the bookroom for two possible novel studies, one that the whole class will (hopefully) be able to handle, and one more in case some have already read the first.
6) Plan the beginning stages of my Literacy Circles program (including charts for what do to on which day of the week, massive piles of photocopies of Activity Sheets, organizing said activity sheets in some manageable way that the kids can figure out, and planning how to mark all the resulting completed activities. Oh, and planning how to track who has finished them and who needs to be chased.)
7) Photocopy and arrange storage for Addition and Subtraction Drill Sheets; also post the rules governing this part of the day. (Ten minutes, three times a week, on the same skill, until it has been mastered three times; then they get two days off to play during that time, before going on to the next skill.)
8) Acquire notebooks, duotangs, pencils, erasers, rulers, agendas, pencil crayons, etc, for all the subjects I'm teaching. (I think it's ten different sets, but I may add to that before the week is out.)
9) Laminate all the lovely bulletin board stuff I bought back in June. (This has to be done at the Teachers' College, which is fortunately not far from my house. I should have done this at some point during the summer, but didn't.)
10) Put up all the lovely bulletin board stuff I bought, and make up cards for two different Word Walls, one English, one French. Plus a section for math vocabulary and maps.
11) Organize a Salad Club amongst interested teachers. (I'm really hoping I get at least five people in it, so we each have one day a week to bring a salad.)
12) Type up and post my schedule and the students' schedules.
13) Investigate supplies of recorders and sheet music programmes for them, or find out how to purchase same. Also dig up and learn to play a few simple choral pieces, for the week or two before we have recorders for everyone. (I'm looking forward to teaching the recorder, one step ahead of the kids, but I also want to teach them to sing. I wonder if any of the other teachers play the piano? Playing and leading at the same time takes more skill than I possess.)
Spots 14-20 on this list are currently blank. By tomorrow at noon they will be full.
Anyone still think teachers do nothing all summer? (If you do think that, be smart enough not to tell me so after I've spent a day moving desks.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-29 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-30 04:06 am (UTC)Of course, the only reason I have to do this every year is that I've never done the same job two years in a row, so I always have to do everything over again. I'm hoping that this school will change that, so that next June, I can leave my classroom with the routines already planned and bulletin boards already up, waiting for me to come plan the specifics. But, yeah, it's a lot of work.