Her Summer Goals 2014 Recap

Goodbye Summer 2014!!

{Source}

It has been a great summer of lounging, reading, relaxing, and some working, but it is back to school for me today. I thought I would recap my goals from this summer and see how I was able to do with all I wanted to accomplish.

My to-do list was a mile long and, I will be honest, I did not get everything done.

School:

I have quite a few picture books and I forget about them each year. I want to organize them and make a list of what I have, along with lessons I think I can do with them. Hopefully this means I will actually use them in class.
Done! I put them into the same Lexile Leveler app as my other classroom library books. 

My county requires that I do D.O.L.s with  my students each day. I like them and I think they teach the students about editing other people's work (which is 1/2 of their state writing test), but the way they are presented is not exactly like the test. I started changing up the basic routine and found a way to make it work for my class and match the test. *Bonus!!* Now, I just have to modify all the week's of sentences and paragraphs.
Not done! It's going to make more work for me throughout the year, but it will be OK (I hope!!).

Last year, my principal decided to put the Civics and Science classes on an A/B schedule (students would have one class on an A day and the other on B day). They had each for the entire year.  This is the schedule I made for this past year that has to be tweaked for this year.
Done! I have the whole year mapped (though I know it will need to be flexible, it's nice to have a basic plan done).

I love these posters I found to help my students with reading strategies. They were just printed on a color printer so they are small. I want to recreate them so they are larger and can be seen throughout the room. Hopefully, this will help remind the students of what they should be doing as they read.
Not Done! Rather than recreate them, I am planning to take them to Office Max and have them blown up. 

I have spent a lot of time (and let's face it - money) building up my classroom library. Now I need to get it organized. I want to use my Lexile Leveler app to find the Lexile level of each book and put a colored sticker on them so I can remember. Then I am going to organize the books by genre so the students can more easily find things they want to read. My students this past year read a lot more partially because of all these books I had in the room and I hope that trend can continue once they are more organized.
Done! This is probably the project I am most excited about. I took photos throughout of the process and I will be blogging about it soon.

The last week of school my Civics students helped me come up with vocabulary terms for Civics. We ended up with 173 words/phrases/terms. *phew* I'm thinking Word Wall!
Not done! I did not get this one finished, because I rethought the idea. I'm not sure how I am going to help the students with vocabulary, but I don't think this is it.

These are a hit each year and I love giving the kids something to recognize their birthday. I put the balloon on the front of the birthday pencil and a coupon for something fun on the back. I will blog more about this once I get them done. 
Partially done! I am enlisting help on this one. I have all the items printed and ready to go. I have some former students who are coming to help me set up my classroom and I'm going to ask them to work on it.

In addition to the school stuff, I had some fun stuff I wanted to do for me.

Read:
I want to finish reading The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. I started last summer but didn't finish before we headed across the pond to Australia.
I also want to read Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller. It is the follow up to The Book Whisperer and I have heard great things. 
In addition to those two school books, I want to read 10 novels.
I read the 10 novels, but did not read Donalyn Miller's two books. Maybe during the school year.

Health:
I plan to log my eating each day into MyFitnessPal. (I started again today so if you also use the program I would love for us to be "Friends". My user name is Manders0808.)
I also want to go to the gym at least four days a week. 
I did well with logging the food that I ate, but the gym was more sporadic. I did manage to lose a few pounds so that's a good start.

Knitting:
I want to finish my first pair of socks, finish my first cabled scarf, and start (and maybe finish) a baby project.
I am over half finished with the socks. I haven't worked on the scarf the entire summer. I started my first garment project instead of a baby project. 

House:
I want to clean out and reclaim one of the bedrooms we don't use that has become a catch-all.
I want to find a way to stop the ants that are attempting to take over my kitchen.
We have a bunch of items that we set aside to take to GoodWill and I want to actually take that final step and get them out of the house.
The first one is half done, and the other two are done. We also found time to decorate some and that's a great feeling!

Misc:
I want to bake a loaf of bread from scratch. I have no idea why but I have had a hankering to do this for a while now. I've done it before and I want to do it again. Anyone have a good recipe?
I sort of cheated this one. I made banana bread, but not a full loaf of yeast bread. Maybe one weekend when we don't have any plans - ha! - I can tackle this. I'm thinking Cinnamon Raisin Bread sounds tasty.


I didn't get everything done, but I am happy with the time I spent relaxing and reading. I also spent some time with family and friends which always feels good. What didn't get done can always be done later. It's been a great summer and I am hoping it leads into a great school year.


How did you do with your summer to-do list? 


Happy Wednesday,