Musings On the Eve of Week 2

I have always had very high expectations for myself.  I use summers to plan and prepare for the upcoming year.  I spend hours working at school when I could be relaxing.  But this summer was different.  The weather was amazing --- sunny and 70's.  I spent hours in the pool reading for pleasure.  Admittedly, I did go into my classroom and unpack from a move and organize 15 years worth of science hoard.  But I did very little planning.

The second week of school starts tomorrow.  I am not sure if I am ready this year.  Sure my room looks amazing (pictures to follow in future posts), but I am pretty much repeating what I did last year.  No gamification, no classroom Twitter, no new curriculum...  Is this good?  Or am I getting lazy in my teaching?

I still have goals and expectations for the year.  And here are my goals:

1. Rethink the 1st trimester curriculum - work on integrating the chemistry more fluidly into an Earth science theme as opposed to a stand alone unit
2. Create skeleton lesson plans for all my units for anyone who might want to use them
3. Make all my units standards-based
4. Earn my Google apps for ed certification
5. Continue exploring gamification --- maybe for the astronomy unit
6. Create 2-3 units for TPT

That should be plenty to keep me busy this year.  It all starts now!

Good luck if you are just starting out this year!