Summer School insights...

Sitting here, watching my students in summer school maneuver through lessons and learning how to do coding I am already thinking ahead for the 2017-2018 school year.  I have been fortunate to work with a really good group of kiddos.  For the most part, they want to learn and apply themselves to their learning.  But, there are the times where they waver off task and it gets a little frustrating.

 Summer school in our district only lasts 16 days (M - Th for 4 weeks) it amazes me how easily they get off task when we have worked intently to make the curriculum fun for these few days.  Our administrator, when given the option to select students for summer school,  advised us to select the kiddos which almost tested proficient on the benchmark post-test at the end of the school year.  We could not send the kiddos which these 14 days would not make an impact on their comprehension, students on a behavioral plan, or students who received services.  But, unfortunately, other administrators did not heed these suggestions by the summer school director for our district because I have a couple of students who are WAY BELOW grade level and are completely clueless on comprehending the content expected to get through these few days.  I really feel for these kiddos, like they slipped through the cracks and they are going to continue to struggle and be behind their classmates throughout their educational life.  I work with them as much as I can but, their understanding of the basic math facts is so low that they, unfortunately, will not be close to their peers when school starts.

This leads me to think about my incoming students.  What levels are they going to be at?  How are their reading skills?  Math skills?  Learning motivation?  Which ones need intense behavior

monitoring or who needs a lot of intervention when it comes to the expected content they need to leave the grade knowing?  The curriculum has already been set for us... our district has converted their overall curriculum plan to utilizing the EngageNY ELA & Math.  Alongside the EngageNY Math, I will be implementing the use of Zearn.org, the online element of  EngageNY Math.  A colleague of mine used it in conjunction with teaching the Math lessons and her class had the highest Math scores in the district by the 3rd benchmark test.  I have seen it work, so I want to implement this in my class as well.  Especially since I will be one of the Google Classrooms at my site - which I am extremely excited about.

I am anticipating a great turn out next year and I cannot wait to get with my 2 other teammates and get our calendar and curriculum in order for the next year.  Hopefully, they are as excited and ready to hit the ground running as hard as I am.  The anticipation is really killing me.  I haven't been ready for a school year to start since my first year of teaching...