Whew! Summer is like a time vacuum. I feel like I was just taking my last day of school pictures and now I’m turning off my summer auto responder on my school email to return to “the real world”. I like to take all of June and July to be completely disconnected from the classroom… but by August 1, I need to get my mind in Back to School mode because it is coming… fast. I go back August 13! If you need a little help getting your mind ready, here is a workshop I did a couple years ago to psych myself up!

As usual, I have some changes I’d like to experiment with this year. I will keep you updated on A) how the kids respond and B) if I slack off and can’t keep up with it!

Change 1: I would like to incorporate some videos from my friend Jeremy Jordan into my Wednesdays. Every Monday and Friday we do weekend chat, Tuesday and Thursday, we do SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) and Wednesday just hasn’t had its thing… so I’m going to head to YouTube to pull a little grammar nugget for the week. My hope is that (on top of our daily pop ups as we do lessons) students will keep getting language in their brain and will be able to then anchor what they know to the rule sets he introduces in the videos! If we could clean up production even 20% this year, I think my Seal of Biliteracy numbers would double!

Change 2: Ending class with a vocab challenge daily. I always give a vocab list when we have a new unit of study, but I have been known to neglect it… like I put it in their LMS and then I never go back to it. If I do a little vocab work with it daily (like a game or a challenge) maybe it will help them remember that it is there and that these are the words we’re trying to use effectively in our discussions!

Change 3: Channeling my inner Annabelle and AnneMarie, I hope to remember to use a darn brain break when things are feeling like too much!

It’s always a lot to think about making changes, but I hope to find good routines to make my planned changes stick. It’s year 32 for me… but you never feel like you have it all together. AND YOU SHOULDN’T! Growth is what makes us continue to be excited to go back to the classroom! KEEP GROWING!

Here’s a little summary of my summery summer. Hope you had a great one and that the new year hasn’t snuck up on you with its fangs out!!

In June, Donna Tatum-Johns and I went to San José, California to do a district training!

And later in June, AC Quintero and I got to go to Greece and the Greek Isles (and Kusadasi in Turkiye) on an amazing adult tour!

When I got home from Greece, I paid off my sweet car, Maxine… only to be hit 5 days later. Maxine did not make it, but I am just fine!

The last weekend of June, my aunt and uncle celebrated their golden anniversary so we all got together in Chicagoland to celebrate them!

All of July was just me recovering from a busy June. Zero pictures taken. 🙂

If you need any resources for back to school, everything at Somewhere to Share and in my TPT store will be 25% off August 5 and 6. On TPT you need to use code BTS25. We have updated Huellas 2 to a sleek new format and are excited to share that with you (so be sure you update your files if you already own it). We have also created a product with all of the listening/reading biographies we created for the Huellas units so teachers can use them no matter the curriculum they use in the classroom! If you own Huellas 1 and 2, you already own these. If not you can find them on TPT and on Somewhere to Share!

Welcome back to teacher mode (whenever it hits and you’re ready to read this). Can’t wait to spend another year with you all!